Story Fragments: Naruto
by demonicnargles
Summary: This will be the dumping ground for stories I never finished and usually, barely started . Maybe someday I will pick one or more of these back up. But please don't ask me to do so.
1. No Exception

**Format for Story Fragments**

**1. Summary**

**2. Story Fragment**

**3. Whatever I had planned for the future of the story**

**4. Reason why I stopped writing**

**I don't want to hear any whining or requests to continue these. I may or may not pick them up later, but probably not.**

**-demonicnargles**

**1. **Every jinkuurichi was insane, a natural result as demons affected their bodies and their minds. Naruto was no exception. Who but the insane could stay cheerful in the face of constant and violent adversity?

* * *

**2. **No one ever suspected. Not even once. He was so different from the others that he _had _ to have escaped their terrible curse.

Look at the boy Gaara. He was a monster who killed with no remorse, whose manipulation of sand and rocks mirrored his stony glare and his solid, imperturbable psyche. He liked killing, and no one could take that away from him. No one dared.

Konoha's spies also knew of two other demon containers. That one from Iwa, the girl Yugito, who had a feline look to her, and frequently burst into violence. Unlike Gaara, who hit his opponents like a rock wall, Yugito stalked her prey and then suddenly pounced, ending their life in an instant.

And then there was the mysterious 'Killer Bee,' who did not look even close to human, with his odd coloration and unnatural size. And he had the rather odd characteristic of bursting randomly into rap or poetry or song. Like the others, he, too, was frequently violent, killing nearby innocents in fits of rage or paranoia.

But Naruto showed none of these signs. He was a cheerful little boy, who never hurt a fly, who laughed and played just like other children, who smiled as broadly as any other happy kid, and who played pranks and joked around with everyone in sight.

So even if every other jinkuurichi was insane, and insanely violent, Naruto appeared to have escaped their terrible curse, other than the whisker-marks on his cheeks, and his slightly elongated canines. But that was a fair trade for sanity, was it not?

So as the Hokage's ANBU watched over him, they were pleasantly surprised and relieved to see that he never once became more than jokingly aggressive, that he preferred instead to play and joke, and to run away from combat, rather than attempting to fight. It was a good sign, they thought. Konoha must have done _something_ right.

So even though they were annoyed when he painted the Hokage monument in garish colors, and then led them on a surprisingly long chase throughout Konoha as they attempted to capture him, they didn't really mind.

A few pranks like this paled in comparison to what they could have faced, if Naruto were like all the others.

* * *

Naruto skipped along to school, humming loudly to himself. It was gonna be a great day today, just like yesterday! As he made his way toward the Academy, he playfully dodged the occasional brick or tomato that some of the less-friendly villagers tossed his way. They were so funny, thinking that he would let them ruin his perfect day! So funny, indeed! They even shouted stuff, but Naruto couldn't hear them over the humming, and didn't really care what they were saying, anyway. They were just funny people, anyway. Nothing useful to say, yeah? Or something like that.

Naruto's eyes sparkled and danced with an inner fire as he waltzed into the classroom. Today was gonna be great. He just knew it! Even the weird voice hadn't bothered him yet! Although sometimes the voice was pretty funny. Voice always said weird things about blood and death. Such a strange guy!

Like Iruka-sensei! He was pretty cool, even when he got all weird. Like when Naruto fell asleep and he got mad, or when Naruto painted the Hokage monument, or other stuff. But he was a pretty cool guy.

Naruto plopped down in a seat, smiling broadly to himself. Whatever class was gonna be today, it was gonna be awesome! Even if Naruto had to _make_ it awesome!

After everyone was in their seats, Iruka reminded them, "Today is the day for your final exams. First, we're going to have everyone take the written test, then you'll go into the next room to perform a technique that they will pick for you. If you do well on the exam, and can perform the technique well enough, then you will be given a hitai-ate and graduate from the Academy. If not, then you will have to come back next year and try again."

Naruto giggled to himself. He'd done that _plenty_ of times. It was pretty funny when people looked at his grades, their faces got all weird and they yelled and shouted at each other. Heh, the joke was on them. Naruto did that on purpose! Ha!

When he got the test, Naruto got right down to business. Working quickly, he drew flowers and trees and butterflies all over his paper, and soon was adding ninjas and animals and more to the picture. Once he was satisfied that he had covered as much of the page as was necessary, Naruto handed in the test to Iruka, who only looked at it and sighed, the same way he had last year.

"Why do I even bother, Naruto, if you don't even try on the test? Why do you come to class at all if you're just going to doodle all over the paper?"

"You bother because you like me!" Naruto stated, as if it were obvious. Iruka rolled his eyes, but smiled slightly. "And I come to class because it's fun! Sometimes you draw all kinds of cool math stuff on the board, next to the drawings of kunai and stuff, and it looks so cool!"

"Whatever, Naruto. Maybe I won't ever understand you. Wait here until everyone's done, and then we'll start calling people out for the practical part of the exam."

Naruto leaped back to his seat, ignoring or not noticing the strange looks he got from everyone else in the class. All of them had obviously overheard the conversation, in the otherwise silent classroom, but none of them were particularly surprised. This _was _Naruto, after all, the dead-last in class, the dunce whose only jutsu was some perverted henge that he occasionally showed off in class to stun teachers.

Quickly growing bored, Naruto started to doodle on the table with his pencil, copying the sort of cool stuff that he had just been talking with Iruka about. A shuriken, with a little curvy line going up and then down to show that it was thrown into the air, and fell back down. Then the weird numbers part. Naruto didn't like it very much, it was all kinda of weird. But it seemed a little better when there were numbers. Made it look smarter, anyway. And that was _kinda_ cool, sometimes.

How did it go again? Not wanting to come up with his own numbers, he just wrote down the ones he seen on the test. Negative sixteen X squared plus 128 X plus 144.

Naruto stopped and frowned. It didn't look done. Oh, well duh! Iruka usually drew all the other numbers with it, too! Naruto quickly scribbled down a bunch of random numbers and letters, and then stopped to survey his work.

It still wasn't very cool. It just looked cluttered. Maybe if he did the stuff that Iruka did, it would look prettier? But doing the work was no fun. Would the prettiness be worth it?

Maybe. So Naruto erased the random stuff and gave it a try. Differentiate to get negative thirty-two X plus 128, which meant that the shuriken reached its maximum height at 4 seconds. Naruto write it all down just like Iruka usually did on the board. Then, if it was four seconds, that mean that the maximum height was like 400.

Naruto carefully wrote down everything, and then stopped to look at his work. Yeah, it did look more pretty when all the numbers made sense. Sort of. Eh, whatever. At least it killed some time.

Naruto looked up, and saw that everyone was _still _ taking the test. What the heck, no one had finished yet? This was boring. And so Naruto decided to tell everyone just how boring this was.

"This is BORING! Can I just take the next part now, Iruka-sensei?"

The entire class turned to stare at him, and Iruka's mouth hung open for a moment, stunned, before he regained hi composure. "Naruto! People are still taking the test, so you need to be quiet! You'll interrupt their concentration!"

"Yeah, right! If they don't have it by now, they aren't ever gonna get it! Let's just..."

"SHUT UP NARUTO!"

"Yeah, baka, if you're so smart, why don't you tell us the answers?"

Naruto laughed, clutching his stomach as he doubled over in amusement. His eyes glittered in the light, a slightly manic expression on his face. "Hahaha, would you even write my answers down? You guys are pretty funny, huh?" Naruto kept laughing.

The other kids were weirded out now. That wasn't funny at all. Why the hell was Naruto laughing? And why were his eyes twitching rapidly, like they were having some sort of seizure?

Iruka rolled his eyes, and decided that there was a valid way to keep Naruto quiet for the rest of the testing time. "Hey, Naruto, if you're done, why don't you do your test on the board?" It couldn't hurt, it wasn't like drawing of forests and ninjas were going to really be cheating.

Naruto stood up suddenly, still chuckling, but somewhat more calm. "Okay, Iruka-sensei! But don't blame me when everyone gets an A!"

The entire class burst into laughter. Iruka felt bad for Naruto, but when he looked at the blonde kid, he realized that his sympathy was misplaced. Naruto was laughing harder than any of them, even as the picked up some chalk to write on the board.

Pretty soon it was quite again, and Iruka was rather pleased with himself for this unique solution to the problem.

Naruto grinned to himself as he wrote on the board. If his test was funny, this would be funnier? Because what could be funnier than writing all the right answers on the board, when the teacher had told him to do so? It was even better than drawing pictures on the test paper!

Iruka was pleased when Sakura handed her paper in, although she looked strange. Maybe she was worried about her grade? She glanced behind him, then returned to her seat. Iruka worked on grading her paper while everyone else worked. Of course Sakura's test was perfect. She had nothing to worry about.

Then Sasuke handed his in, the Ino, then Kiba, and everyone else followed soon after. Iruka worked through them quickly, having memorized the answers for quick grading. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Everyone's paper was perfect. Well, excluding Naruto's, obviously, but then, he hadn't really even tried. Maybe this year's test was too easy?

Shrugging his shoulders, Iruka decided to start the next part of the test. Turning to tell Naruto to go sit down, Iruka's eyes bugged out of his head. On the board, behind him were all of the test problems, the correct work, and the correct answers. And now Naruto was adding the finishing touches to a rather comic drawing of Iruka staring bug-eyed at a chalkboard while the class was laughing.

The blonde suddenly seemed to realize that Iruka was staring, and began to laugh hysterically. The rest of the class also, laughed, as Iruka tried to comprehend what had just happened. Had Naruto seen the tests and copied from them? But how could he have? Iruka would have noticed that. And besides, no one had done the work in such a detailed manner as Naruto had written on the board.

How had the boy done it? There was no way he could have figured it out on his own. Or could he have?

Unwilling to make another test, Iruka decided that this was his fault for letting Naruto do this, and decided to take it in stride. The rest of the class would have all passed, anyway. Iruka knew they were at least that competent.

Rather shaken, Iruka announced the next part of the exam.

* * *

Naruto walked into the room, feeling quite pleased with himself. Everything was turning out great today! He had even gotten other people to laugh at his jokes, which didn't happen very often. It was a great day, after all!

And now he had the chance for even more fun.

"Naruto, please perform the henge for us, please," Iruka asked from behind the table, where he and his fellow teacher, Mizuki, sat.

Naruto grinned mischievously, and before Iruka could jump to his feet to object, Naruto had transformed into a rather sexy blonde woman, which sent both chuunin in the room crashing into the wall in geysers of blood.

Ignoring his lost dignity, Iruka returned to his seat. "I'm sorry, Naruto, that won't do. Next, create two bunshin for us here, in the likeness of yourself."

Naruto formed the seal, but before he could make the jutsu work, he got distracted, watching the pretty swirls of chakra running around his hand. He wondered why only he could ever see it, because he had asked Iruka about seeing chakra before, and had been told that only people with special abilities, like those of the Uchiha or Hyuuga, could see chakra.

But nevertheless, Naruto watched in fascination as the chakra swirled around his hand, and spun off in the direction of whatever technique he had gotten distracted from.

Wanting to see more, Naruto added more chakra, and the swirls turned into a blaze of blue, surrounding his hands. He pushed it out, watching in amusement as the chakra extended from his hands.

Ignoring whatever Iruka was saying, he wandered out of the door Iruka was pointing to, still playing with the chakra. He took his hands apart, wand watched and the chakra divided into two, smaller blazes in each hand.

It was weird. He could push it out further, and it stayed there, like part of his hand, just further away.

And it was really pretty, a lovely blue that shimmered with a light of its own. Reaching out further, he pushed the chakra toward a rock on the ground, and willed the chakra to pick it up.

The chakra instantly conformed to his will, shifting into the shape of hand, and closing around the rock. Picking up the rock almost ten yards away, Naruto willed it to come to him, and the chakra arm instantly shortened, bring the rock into reach.

Naruto grabbed it with his real hand, and tossed it a few times into the air. That was cool. Maybe that would work it some really cool pranks!

Hopping onto the roof, Naruto began to fantasize about different pranks he could pull with his new, longer reach.

Back in the testing room, Mizuki pleaded Naruto's case. "Come on, Iruka, he's been at this for years. Just give him a chance. You saw how he just stared at his hands as he left, he was obviously trying, and was disappointed he didn't do it. Just give him another chance."

"We can't do that, Mizuki. We can't let untrained kids run out into the ninja world unable to do the most basic techniques."

"What about that kid last year? Rock Lee, or whoever?"

"He has special circumstances, and I had to get permission from the Hokage himself to pass him. But Naruto _is_ able to do the techniques, but he doesn't. I cannot, in good conscience, pass him."

Calling the next student in, Iruka failed to see the grin spreading on Mizuki's face.

* * *

Hours later, Mizuki found Naruto sitting alone on a rooftop, still staring into his hands with a faraway look. "Hey, Naruto."

The blonde immediately turned and smiled at Mizuki. "Hey, Mizuki-sensei, whatcha need?"

"Actually, I have an idea for you. You see, I have another way for you to graduate, but because you failed the tests, it will be much harder than the stuff they asked you to do there."

Naruto eyes lit up. This sounded like _fun_. "Yeah! Yeah! What do I gotta do?"

Mizuki grinned. The kid was so eager to pass after years of failing, he'd do anything. "You've got to treat this like a mission. You have to get into the scroll library next to the Hokage tower, and take a scroll I put in there, and bring it to me in the forest, without getting caught. The scroll is called the Scroll of Forbidden Techniques. So you just go to go get it and bring it back, alright?"

Naruto eyes widened. This was gonna be so cool!

Mizuki smiled as Naruto immediately took off in the direction of the library. Too easy.

* * *

Naruto face was frozen in a broad, wide-eyed grin that stretched his face in a rather unnatural looking way, even as he carefully evaded the rather sub-par security around the scroll library. Pulling himself up to a window on the second floor using his strange, pretty chakra arms, Naruto looked around carefully for the scroll that Mizuki had been talking about.

But, being the sort of person that he was, he quickly became distracted when he saw a scroll about a super-cool sounding raiton jutsu, and half an hour later, he was still seated on the floor, reading yet another scroll. Such pretty words, and they told him how to do cool stuff! These techniques must be really shiny or special if they are all locked up in this room, Naruto reasoned, so they must be super-cool!

"Hey! What are you doing here?! No one's supposed to be in here!"

Naruto froze, his grin stuck on his face as he slowly turned to face the voice. A guard, some chuunin who must have looked into the room.

"Well, if it isn't the demon brat. I don't think anyone will fault me if you were to die while being put under arrest, don't you think?"

Naruto vision blurred at the edges, and began to darken. This was no fun at all. No fun at all. The man pulled out a knife. Ugly, ugly knife. Not pretty at all. Not even shiny. Not even sparkly. It was a stupid gray knife. Stupid, stupid knife. Stupid man.

Naruto's smile faded away, and his body began to tremble. His breathing quickened. What was this feeling? This strange warmth? This heightened feeling of awareness, even as his vision was obscured by a dark mist.

The stupid man glowed blue in the darkness, his body a network of flowing blue lines. Some warm, sweet smell wafted from that direction. Naruto found himself licking his lips, although they weren't dry, and he wasn't hungry. Or rather, he felt hungry, but not for food. Not even for ramen, which was absurd.

When the man approached with the kunai, Naruto suddenly saw it. This could be fun after all! What fun indeed! Naruto's lips stretched into a hideously lopsided grin.

Grabbing the man with a blue hand, Naruto flung him back into a wall. "Let's play ninja for a while, okay mister?" His eyes flickered with a dangerous light.

The stupid man didn't seem to think that Naruto had such a good idea. He opened his mouth to call for help, but found his jaw held shut by an invisible force.

Naruto watched in wonder as a single, weirdly large blue hand held the man's mouth shut, and another one pushed him against a wall. Naruto also wanted to pulled the man upright, but he needed...

He giggled when another hand appeared, extending from his chest to grab the man's collar and jerk the stupid guy upright. Stupid man, interrupting his fun. Stupid man, thinking that he would get Naruto in trouble.

But how to make the stupid man go away, and not tell anyone? The voice, which had been silent all day, made a quiet suggestion. Barely a whisper, but it made perfect sense.

Of course! Why hadn't Naruto seen it before? The dead people didn't talk, at least, not outside of the stories, did they?

The voice assured him that they did not, and so Naruto cocked his head to one side and began to decide how to go about this. Blood was pretty, but not a lot of blood. Only a little was pretty. Lots of blood was ugly and gross.

The voice made another suggestion. If the hand was red, too, it could make the stupid man dead with only a little blood.

Naruto giggled to himself. It sounded like cool! Or sort of cool. Not as cool as ramen, but this might be close to almost as cool.

In Naruto's eyes, red electricity crackled down the arm the held the man jaw shut, but the thumb under the chin and four fingers on the top of the head. And when the strange lightning reached the man...

The chuunin guard groaned loudly, his scream silenced by the hand holding his jaw shut, and arched his back as some sort of pain shot through his body. Naruto watched in curiosity as the man twitched and writhed, then slumped heavily against eh arms, bleeding from his eyes, mouth, nose and ears.

Naruto laughed out loud. That _was_ pretty! Only a little blood, and it was so cool, just coming out of his face like that! So cool!

So cool that he tried it on the next chuunin to interrupt him, also. And it was still just as cool on the third one, too.

After a few hours, Naruto put the scrolls back, a quick task with dozens of arms that seemed to understand his wishes without any direct control, and took out the one that Mizuki had talked about.

Grabbing the bodies of the mean people, Naruto skipped into the forest, hiding the meanies in some bushes along they way. No one would care about them, since they weren't nice people, right?

But then he saw the place that Mizuki told him about, and forgot all about them. Now he was here. But Mizuki wasn't here. So what should he do? Waiting was no fun.

Well, this was a big scroll. Maybe some of the stuff in it was as cool as those other scrolls.

* * *

Mizuki walked into the clearing, quite pleased with himself. Not only had Naruto managed to take the scroll, but now three guards were missing as well. Even though the Hokage obviously liked the kid, he could do little but order his capture and the return of the scroll, with lethal force authorized if necessary.

Mizuki was _quite_ sure it would be necessary. Oh, yes. He could kill the demon, then take the scroll to Orochimaru and receive his reward.

But Naruto was so enraptured in whatever he was reading, quite a ways into the scroll, that he failed to notice the chuunin at all.

Mizuki shrugged, walking toward the kid. If he didn't notice by the time Mizuki got there, the chuunin would just assassinate him from behind. And if he did, then Mizuki could congratulate him and ask for the scroll.

* * *

Naruto's thoughts were removed from the pretty stuff in the scroll when he felt something brush one of the arms floating around him. He turned to see the white-haired chuunin he had been waiting for. But the scroll was so cool, and Naruto wasn't done with it yet.

"Hey, great job, Naruto! Let me see that scroll, and then you can graduate to genin!"

"No. I wanna read it, silly. You can have it later." Naruto's playful voice enraged the traitor chuunin, but he kept his anger out of his voice.

"... That stuff is too hard for you. Just give it here."

"You're a funny man, Mizuki-sensei! You know, I don't think I wanna graduate yet. Iruka is still kinda funny, and I like all the pretty stuff he does on the board. You can have the scroll next year, maybe, and I'll graduate then, alright?"

Mizuki clenched his teeth, and pulled out a kunai.

Naruto smiled maniacally. Mizuki wanted to play! Play ninja with him! But Naruto wanted to read, and that meant that Mizuki would just have to wait.

"Ha, ha, ha, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! You're a funny guy, Mizuki-sensei! But we can play ninja later, I wanna read!"

Mizuki lunged forward, but was hit by some invisible force that sent him careening into a tree with a hollow _thud_. Picking himself up, Mizuki glared at the stupid Academy student. What on earth was that?

"Just give up now, Naruto, and maybe I'll let you live, you stupid brat!"

Naruto was sad, now. Mizuki didn't understand. But maybe if Naruto showed him a shiny justu, he would understand just how cool the scroll was. He would just have to wait his turn to read it.

Running through the several dozen seals, Naruto found himself humming as his hands formed seals to the rhythm. Bringing up the final seal, Naruto grinned as his chakra rushed into the sky, where clouds began to darken and swirl in a dangerous, but pretty sort of way. Like a thunderstorm.

Mizuki had only heard of this technique once, and he knew enough to comprehend just how hard the technique was, and just how much chakra it required. This kid was definitely a demon! A monster!

Iruka leaped into the clearing. "Naruto, don't give him the scroll! Mizuki's a traitor, he..."

A bolt of lightning blasted the white-haired chuunin. The charred corpse fell back, landing almost noiselessly on the ground, where it smoked and cooked in its own heat.

Iruka rubbed his eyes, to make sure he wasn't dreaming, but sure enough, Mizuki was now a pile of ash on the ground. Turning to face Naruto, he was taken aback to see that the boy had already returned to reading the scroll.

* * *

**3. **Not sure where this was going, really. Some sort of walkthrough with Naruto lucking out on stuff, or winning because he does completely random, unexpected stuff (whether really powerful, or really stupid)

**4. **I stopped writing because, like usual, I lost all motivation to write, and because Naruto was getting way to powerful, way too fast, and I _really_ didn't feel like rewriting this.


	2. In the still of the night

**1. **This was to be a story about Naruto in ANBU while pretending to be much weaker, for appearances. He honed (and still hones) his skills on random ninjas and people at night.

* * *

**2.**

_**The Ninja's Pocket Book of Jutsus**__: __**Kage Bunshin no Jutsu**__ is a rare and powerful technique, similar to all clone techniques and superior to most in all but chakra cost. This technique requires no materials from the surrounding, instead creating a clone out of shadow. This jutsu uses an advanced form of chakra manipulation to do without elements, and so requires more chakra. The shadow clone is unique in that the user's chakra is divided equally among the clones, whereas most clone techniques give only the chakra necessary to animate the element they use. This allows shadow clones to last longer, to exist far away from the original, and to use the original's techniques with the chakra they have. Because of this, there are many variation on the Shadow Clone technique, which are listed below..._

* * *

Iruka sighed. Naruto was asleep in class. Again. Just like every day. To be sure, it was almost better than when the boy was awake and shouting demands for training and techniques and declaring that he would be Hokage someday. But the boy couldn't learn anything if he slept through class. After failing two years in a row, it was obvious that Naruto was not absorbing the lessons in his sleep.

"NARUTO!!! Wake up!"

The blonde jerked off the desk, and quickly wiped the drool from his mouth. "I was awake the whole time, Iruka!"

"Damn it, Naruto, if you don't pay attention, you'll never graduate from the Academy!"

"I'm gonna be Hokage, of course I'll graduate!"

"Not if you don't learn what I'm teaching you!"

"You're only teaching the boring stuff! We need to learn more than this... this stuff!" Naruto waved his hand wildly at the board, which was covered in diagrams showing ambush tactics.

"This STUFF will keep you from getting killed!"

"I wanna learn a powerful technique to blow away enemy ninjas, I don't wanna sit around in bushes for them to walk into a spike trap!"

"NARUTO!!! The exam is tomorrow and if you don't pass it you'll have to stay ANOTHER YEAR at the academy!"

"I can't fail! I'm gonna be Hokage!"

Iruka rubbed the bridge of his nose, feeling another migraine coming.

* * *

Deep in the forests of Konoha:

The ANBU code-named Dog checked the wires and explosive tags one last time. There were enough tags to level a city block, but they were only the distraction. Dog signaled the OK to Deer, who had just finished his wire traps. Deer turned and signaled to Ox. Ox put the final touches on his genjutsu ambush, and signaled to the final member of their team, Fox, who sat some distance away from the traps.

Fox acknowledged the signal and melted into the ground. The other three moved away into some trees to watch.

Soon the targets, three Stone-nin scouted too far into Leaf territory, came jogging north, unsuspecting. But suddenly they stopped, seeing the wire traps, which were not well-hidden. They turned to the west to go around it and ran into the genjutsu Ox had prepared. But these Stone-nin were obviously of a higher caliber than most, probably jounin ro special jounin, and they quickly and silently dispelled the genjutsu and moved to the east hoping to avoid the other genjutsus they sensed ahead.

As they passed over a tree, they heard a loud hissing sound, and the stone ninja sprinted forward to avoid the tags they could hear. All around them, they heard tags burning.

They got out of range just in time as an entire section of the forest exploded in fire. Then more explosions, each just barely too far behind the stone ninja to harm them. Soon the last tags detonated and the stone nin breathed an audible sigh of relief.

Dog saw how they had escaped, and smiled. Everything was working perfectly.

A gloved hand grabbed one of the stone-nin from underground and zapped the ninja with several thousand volts. The charred body started to fall but was blown away as Fox leapt at the two remaining ninja.

The two ninja drew kunai and blocked the wild punches and kicks the ANBU threw out. They two worked in unison, then both attacked from opposite sides. Fox couldn't block, and took a kunai to the back.

But instead of dying, he grabbed a stone-nin in each hand as his eyes and mouth glowed with a brighter and brighter light.

Then he exploded.

When the smoke cleared, the Dog, Deer and Ox leaped down to inspect the bodies. All of them were dead. Fox rose from underground, and picked the scroll from the first ninja he had killed. He inspected it while the other three check the bodies for anything else of value.

Dog finished and stood to face Fox. "Is that what we needed?"

Fox nodded in the affirmative. "This is the scroll we were looking for. Let us return quickly to Konoha."

They responded in unison, "Yes, captain."

* * *

As they reached the gates of Konoha, the ANBU relaxed. Another successful mission. But then, every mission they ever sent Fox on was successful.

Dog was pleased to see Fox doing so well. About a five years ago, the blonde ANBU known as Fox had once been weakest ninja ever to enter ANBU, and had been allowed in mostly because of a shortage of ninja at the time. But after a year of struggling and constant reprimands from command, Fox seemed to change overnight. Suddenly he was powerful, fast, strong, smart. He rose in stature and reputation among the ANBU, until now he led them all.

Dog was glad that Fox had decided to finally apply himself. In many of the most dangerous missions, Fox had been the one to complete the mission and save the lives of his teams. Enemies could never touch him, because every time they finally got a hit in, it turned out to be a clone. Sometimes they found out because of the cloud of ninja smoke. Sometimes they found out because it dissolved into a cloud of poison gas, or was revealed to be a teammate under genjutsu, or because it dispelled with a violent electrical shock.

But Fox was most famous among Konoha's ANBU for the clones he used most often. The ones that enemies discovered because they exploded. These exploding clones became more and more effective as Fox continued to improve. Because the better he fought, the more ninja that would gang up on him, and the more ninja that Fox could kill with a single clone.

And no one ever expected it, because no enemy had seen it and lived to tell others about it. Fox only used it when he needed to kill, and so it was his most effective weapon. Dog felt honored to have seen it in action. He and the other two teams that Fox led were the only ones that got to witness this amazing technique.

As they entered Konoha, Fox stopped and turned to face his team. "You may all go home. I will report the results to Hokage-sama and give him the scroll."

Dog smiled underneath his mask. This was the other reason that Fox was popular. Fox usually took care of paperwork and tedious mission stuff himself, and let his teams go home much earlier than they could have otherwise. No one was gonna argue with that.

* * *

Iruka watched Naruto walk out of the schoolyard. The blonde was never going to graduate at this rate, but Iruka didn't know what it would take to motivate him. Maybe he should ask Mizuki...

* * *

Naruto arrived at his house, walked inside, and sat on the edge of his bed, waiting patiently. It was now four in the afternoon.

* * *

On his way to the Hokage tower, Fox stopped by library of scrolls. No one there questioned his presence. He pulled out a scroll, looked at the label, and put it back haphazardly, where it still stuck out of the shelves. The guards paid no mind, and didn't notice.

Fox continued on his way to the tower.

* * *

Naruto heard the shouts outside, and was not surprised when a brick came flying in the window. Catching it with ease, he stacked it with the others in the corner, then returned to sitting on the edge of his bed. It was six in the evening. 14 more hours to go.

* * *

Fox stepped into the Hokage's office and handed the captured scroll to the old man. As Sarutobi looked it over, Fox waited in silence.

The Hokage nodded. "Excellent job, Yagami, although it smells a little singed. Next time be a little more careful with the Raiton jutsus, or you might burn the scroll.

Fox nodded, his expression hidden behind the mask he still hadn't taken off.

The Hokage sighed. "You're off duty now, Yagami. Go ahead and take the mask off."

Yagami pulled of the mask revealing his smirking grin which made his eyes almost shut. "Of course, Hokage-sama. It was getting hot anyway." Yagami's long blonde hair, pulled back in a ponytail, framed his average, though friendly face, and made his gray, nondescript eyes even duller from the contrast. The ANBU waited patiently for the elder man's response.

The Hokage rolled his eyes openly. They went through this every time Yagami got back from a mission. At least, ever since Yagami had started applying himself. Before then, the man was unreliable, and made pathetic homage to the Hokage every time he came into the office for any reason. Sarutobi had only tolerated it because he hoped for improvement in Yagami, and because he pitied the blonde, who had been orphaned by the Kyuubi. All things considered, the Hokage rather liked this new Yagami.

"There was nothing special to report about the mission, I suppose?" Sarutobi inquired.

"Nothing worth mentioning. The relevant details are in this report, if you care to look it over." The off-duty ANBU placed a sheet of paper on the Hokage's desk. "Will that be all, Hokage-sama?"

The old man nodded. "That is all for now. Please report back tomorrow for the briefing on your next mission. With Cat and Tiger, this time."

Yagami inclined his head in the affirmative. "Of course, Hokage-sama."

Sarutobi smiled as the young man walked out of the room. He was a nice man, and an excellent shinobi. If only there were more like him.

* * *

Mizuki groaned aloud, but inwardly rejoiced at being placed on guard duty for the scroll library. He would have more time to look for the scroll that Lord Orochimaru wanted. And, his conversation with Iruka fresh in mind, he knew just how to get it once he found it.

The boy would do anything to graduate, and Mizuki would make him an offer that the boy wouldn't refuse.

Upon arriving, Mizuki went on his appointed rounds for a few minutes, and memorized how all the other sentries moved. Once he was sure he would have a minute or two alone with the scrolls, he began to look.

He noticed a scroll sticking out, and glanced at the title. A maniacal grin split his face. What luck was this, that the scroll he sought all this time should be waiting here for him, on the very day that he had discovered the means by which to take it without risk?

Obviously he was fated to succeed. Mizuki hummed merrily as he went on patrol again.

Hidden in the shadows, the unseen Yagami smirked, and his eyes flickered with a dangerous light.

* * *

Night fell. The shadow stalked the night, and claimed two more. The criminal duo were found lying dead in the streets the next morning by a chuunin on his way to work. The ninja immediately reported the killing, but no one was surprised. The serial killer, whoever it was, targeted mostly criminals, and the few that weren't criminals were scum anyway, men whom no one liked.

It was better than several nearby cities, which had serial killers as well, but over there anybody could be a target. At least in Konoha, the killer was looking out for the people. No one minded his work, and so no one investigated the killing very far.

Which was fine for the shadow. It needed the practice anyway. Kept it in shape. Nothing worse than a feeble body, it thought as it's eyes glowed in the shadows.

* * *

It was morning again. At precisely eight o'clock, Naruto rose from where he was seated on the edge of the bed and began preparations for the Academy. Class started at 7:30, and needed to be at least another few minutes late. He looked at his outfit in the mirror, and unzipped the jacket a little, and ruffled and wrinkled the pants until they looked slept in. He rubbed his hair into greater disarray, and then walked to the door of his house.

He opened the door and immediately came to life. "Kuso! I'm gonna be late!" The villagers laughed at the idiot demon child as he passed.

* * *

"Alright, Naruto, make three bunshin"

Iruka hoped against all hope than Naruto had miraculously improved overnight. Alas, it was not so.

One bunshin exploded from an overload of chakra, one paled and faded where it stood from lack of chakra, and one was correct in every aspect, except that all of the colors on it were inverted.

Iruka stared at the strange negative copy, which changed as he watched until it turned grey in the light, and vanished.

"Naruto, you fail."

"WHAT!!! I HAD THREE BUNSHIN! YOU SAW THEM!"

"Those were the worst bunshin I have ever seen! They are not enough to pass this exam."

Mizuki looked over at Iruka. "Maybe we could let him pass this year? He's tried so hard, and maybe he would learn more quickly out in the real world."

Iruka sighed, and shook his head. "I can't do that. Naruto needs to demonstrate an aptitude for ninja skills before he can graduate. Until then, he's stuck here."

Naruto slumped and walked away, towards the Hokage monument. Sometime this evening, probably. That's what the master said.

The shadow laughed silently. Learn more quickly in the real world, indeed. That was exactly how the shadow had learned. Spying on others, then stealing techniques, then practice, practice, practice. Every night, he had to practice. But it was well worth it. The night time practices made up for what he could not do in the daytime practices. Which reminded the shadow that he was late for the practice today. Not that it mattered today, since his partner would be even later.

* * *

Yagami fought his clones viscously, doing his best to get them all without taking a hit. A rather difficult task, as they were just as skilled as he was. Every time he finished practice, he was a little better, and so the next time he made his clones to fight against, they were even better than before. And the clones never took it easy.

Yagami dodged a fireball a clone had flung towards him, then Kawarimi'd away from a shower of kunai that would have skewered him if he had continued moving in the direction of his dodge.

He saw a clone put its hands together is a cross-shaped seal, but the other clones were keeping him busy with taijutsu, and he could not prevent the clone from creating another 20 clones. Though these new clones each had one twentieth of the original clones chakra, they were more than sufficient to use a single jutsu and then engage in taijutsu.

Yagami tried his new experimental jutsu, hoping for the best, and formed a seal. Before he could move, a clone came up and punch him from behind, grinning from ear to ear with its victory.

Yagami exploded, and his new jutsu, the Exploding Shadow Kunai Clone, blasted a crater in the ground and fired shadow kunai in all directions. His unsuspecting clones took heavy casualties, though many kawarimi'd out of the way.

Yagami leapt from his cover in a nearby tree and took out a clone before he was seen by the others. The clones launched kunai in his direction, forcing Yagami to dodge to the side.

A clone waited for him there and finished its seals. Lightning crackled around one arm, and the clone prepared to lauched what Yagami recognized as the Lightning Missile Technique. Thinking quickly, Yagami reached out with his mind and trapped the clone in a genjutsu. The clone began attacking other clones, who promptly annihilated him with a barrage of kunai.

Yagami continued to dodge and dodge the clones, but he was getting bored with this, and his sparring partner would be arriving any minute now. Deciding he might as well try another of his current experimental jutsus, he formed a long sequence of seals, and then pushed his chakra into a new technique.

Fire spouted from his tenketsu, and a sudden wind whipped the flames into a furious inferno that raged over the area. The clones, who had no knowledge of this technique since Yagami had never performed it before, perished in an instant.

Yagami waited for a few moments and expanded his senses to make sure there were no clones left. There were none. A perfect trial run of his new jutsu.

Just then his partner arrived, giving a pathetic excuse as usual. "Hey, Yagami, sorry I'm late, but there was this woman whose purse had just been stolen, and I just couldn't rest until I found it for her..."

Yagami grinned and rolled his eyes. "Glad you could make it, despite your difficulties, Kakashi. This will probably be our last spar in a while, since you got put of the list for a genin team, right?"

The masked jounin smiled with his visible eye. "Don't worry. I've never passed a team yet, and I'm sure the next batch won't be any better. After a few days I'll do the bell test and then we can spar some more."

Yagami nodded. "Sounds good to me."

Kakashi dropped in to a fighting stance. "In the meantime, let's make this fight worthwhile, since it will be a few days until we can practice again."

Yagami grinned and summoned a dozen clones without using hand seals. Kakashi rolled his visible eye. Yagami obviously used clones way too often if he was so practiced that he could do them without seals. Kakashi tested the clones by throwing a kunai at one.

The clone dodged, but didn't see the second kunai hidden in the shadow of the first. The clone burst and a sent tiny bolts of lighting randomly around, one of which nearly struck Kakashi.

Kakashi frowned under his mask. He hated Raiton clones.

* * *

As evening fell, Naruto still sat alone on top of the Hokage monument, a sad expression on his face. Suddenly Mizuki dropped and landed right next to him, causing the boy to scream in surprise.

Mizuki smiled, but didn't laugh at Naruto's obvious failure to detect his approach. "Hey Naruto, since you didn't do so well in the test earlier, I found another way for you to pass the academy."

Naruto's eyes lit up. Mizuki explained, "Although you didn't do well on the jutsu test, I made a practical test for you to do instead. This will require stealth and speed, which are just as important to a ninja as jutsus, if not more so. You need to sneak into the scroll library next to the Hokage tower, and get a scroll which I put there. It's labeled Forbidden Jutsu, because this test is like a mission where you have to steal enemy's scroll. Get that scroll, and then go wait about a quarter mile into the forest west of Konoha."

"Shouldn't there be, like, a place for us to meet that's easier to find, Mizuki-sensei?"

"Don't worry Naruto. I'll find you out there. Oh, and you have until midnight to get the scroll."

Naruto jumped up immediately. "Right! I won't fail this time, Mizuki-sensei!" And then the blonde sprinted off toward the library.

Mizuki chuckled. If the kid got the scroll, then Mizuki could give it to Orochimaru. If the kid failed, who would they believe, the demon child who said his teacher told him to steal a scroll, or the teacher?

* * *

Yagami avoided Kakashi's half-hearted punch. "Hey one-eye, let's call it quits for today. You're obviously tired, and I've got stuff to do tonight."

Kakashi sighed and stood facing the gray-eyed ANBU. "I guess you're right. Hey, what are you doing tonight anyway? You're single aren't you?"

The blonde grinned from ear to ear. "Precisely."

Kakashi raised his eyebrows. "Oh, I see. Well, I'll get in touch when I can spar again. Don't exhaust yourself too much tonight, I expect you to be just as formidable after I've failed this team."

Yagami laughed as Kakashi turned and left. Tonight wouldn't be exhausting, it was just a chuunin, and an unsuspecting one at that.

Yagami hummed to himself as he wandered into the woods, and waited at the place he knew that blonde idiot would show up. After tonight, everything would be perfect, and he would be able to explain anything that came up.

* * *

Naruto leapt into the window of the scroll library and landed with cat-like grace. Staying motionless in the shadows, he waited until the patrolling guards on this side of the library were both out of sight.

Naruto crept over to the shelves, grabbed the correct scroll, and leapt back out the window. Looking at a clock hung in a shop window, he judged that it would be about an hour until the Hokage showed up to the library on his walk, or at least the master had said that it would be so, and therefore the blonde crouched in the shadows to wait a while. As he waited, Naruto decided he might as well read the scroll a bit now. He was getting replaced soon, anyway.

* * *

Yagami relaxed in a tree branch until he heard the alarm sound from in the village. Smiling to himself underneath his mask, he jogged to appointed meeting spot.

Within moments Naruto cam running in, and handed the scroll over. The young boy saluted, and vanished in a cloud of smoke.

Yagami smiled at the new knowledge he had just gained, and created a single clone, using tons of extra chakra. With any luck, this clone would not have to be replaced for another few weeks.

As soon as the clone appeared, naturally looking like Yagami, it henged itself into an obnoxious orange jumpsuit and ruffled blonde hair, complete with the sparkling blue eyes. Yagami nodded, and began reading the Forbidden Scroll.

A little knowledge wouldn't hurt anybody. Except his enemies.

* * *

Mizuki jumped into the clearing, and, as he had hoped, found Naruto sitting with the scroll. Mizuki chuckled inwardly. It was just too easy.

"Great job, Naruto! Toss the scroll over here so I can make sure it's the right one, and then we can head back to the village to get you registered as a ninja!"

"NO! Whatever you do, Naruto, don't give him that scroll!"

Mizuki scowled. Damn, so close. "What are you doing here, Iruka?"

'I followed you here, Mizuki. There's no way I will let you have that scroll. Naruto, run!"

But the young blonde seemed frozen. Mizuki, hoping to end this quickly, flung a large shuriken at Naruto. But at the last possible moment, Iruka jumped into the way, and took the blow in the back.

"Run... Naruto..."

The small blonde's face formed into a mask of rage. "You hurt Iruka sensei! You'll pay for that!"

Mizuki couldn't help but laugh out loud. "Oh, really? You're gonnna make me pay? Hahaha!!! You and what army?"

Naruto formed a single seal.

Mizuki suddenly wished he hadn't asked.

The screams continued long into the night. Yagami rather enjoyed it. And now, with Iruka as a witness, Naruto could claim to have learned the shadow clone from the forbidden scroll. Yagami no longer had to have his replacement avoid every single hit. If his clone took a hit and vanished, Naruto could claim it was a shadow clone, and no one would think twice.

Perfect. And because everyone knew that Naruto was the host for the Kyuubi, no one would think to look for the demon in ANBU. Yagami's slitted red eyes glittered in delight. After all his preparation, things were finally in place.

_**Flashback**_

A four-year old Naruto watched jealously from the shadows of the bushes as the academy students practiced their kunai throwing skills. Taking care to hear everything the instructors told the kids, Naruto returned to the same place late, late at night, and practiced by himself.

If he wanted to be able to stand up to the villagers, he needed to be able to defend himself. Stealth was easy to learn, and as he got better, he could 'attend' more classes at the academy, some of which dealt with stealth, and further improved Naruto's skill.

Naruto had even stolen a textbook, and learned everything he could. Knowing that he would be hiding the rest of his life from the angry villagers who beat him as often as they found him, he studied genjutsu until the academy books could no longer help him. Using what he learned, he was able to sneak in to the library under henges to get more books, and to become better at genjutsu and other skills. By the time he enrolled in the Academy, Naruto could cast simple genjutsu without effort, and maintain them for as long as he was conscious. He had taught himself

Thanks to his benefactor, this was for as long as he needed, because his benefactor made it so that he did not need sleep. The same benefactor who had told him how to learn, the same benefactor who had taught him how to steal, and how to hide, and how to survive in a place where everyone hated him.

The Kyuubi helped him through everything, mostly out of self-interest, but all the same, Naruto was grateful.

* * *

**3. **This story was then going to go on, and either have Naruto set everything up for revenge on Konoha, become Hokage and make Konoha a haven for jinkuurichi, take out Akatsuki, or some combination thereof. I don't really remember all that well. This story has been sittingin my hard drive for about a year or so now.

**4. **I stopped writing this because I ran out of motivation. Gets so old typing this stuff up, and constantly hit the wrong keys, and have to go back and fix it, and I was bored with the story, anyway.


	3. Demon in the Details

**1.**

Chakra capacity increases every time a ninja uses a lot of chakra, because doing so slightly damages the coils, which, like muscles, heal to be better than before. Having a demon, Naruto's coils are constantly being damaged and healed, over and over... Blah blah blah, a story where Naruto has almost literally infinite chakra. To keep him from begin incredibly overpowered, he would be at least as dumb as original canon Naruto, and would never learn many techniques other than the Academy ones, and the Kage Bunshin.

* * *

**2.**

The moment Iruka asked him for the bunshin, Naruto knew he was screwed. No matter how hard he tried, and no matter how often he asked for help, he could never get it. For that matter, Naruto couldn't get very many techniques. The only two he had learned were the replacement technique and the henge.

It probably wasn't the instructors' faults, Naruto knew, that he couldn't learn anything else. But it seemed like every time they explained it to him, it made less sense. After several weeks, Naruto had given up. The instructors hadn't seemed very bothered, but Naruto was sure that it was only because they had many other students to teach, who could catch on to the concepts more quickly.

All this said, Naruto still tried the bunshin, just in case he had stopped practicing long enough to lose his bad habits.

Seeing the expression on Iruka's face, Naruto didn't even need to look at his clones to know that he had failed. He heard one clone fizzle, while the other ones hissed like a balloon losing air as it slowly faded away. Naruto pulled up his cheesy smile, embarrassed.

Iruka shook his head sadly. "I'm sorry, Naruto. That's just not gonna cut it."

"Hey, why not give him a chance. I mean, this is his third attempt or something, right? Give him a break." Naruto glanced up at the white-haired chuunin, Mizuki, hardly daring to hope.

"We can't just send him off unprepared. The things we teach in the Academy are vital to survival as a ninja. Graduating him before he learns these things would be akin to killing him." Iruka smiled sadly and sighed. "Sorry, Naruto. Better luck next year."

Naruto nodded slowly as he walked out of the room. They had changed the required technique the last two years, so maybe next year it would be the henge or the kawarimi (replacement), and Naruto could finally graduate. It was really too bad that he hadn't known the henge the first year, when it had been the final test.

Naruto wandered around town aimlessly. Since he couldn't learn anything new, he might as well do what he did every day he didn't have class, and on the days he decided to skip: work on perfecting what little he did know. He would need to, to become Hokage, after all.

Not that he fancied himself a great trainer. But he felt like he made more progress by himself than he did with the instructors as the Academy. Those poor guys must have been so tired of telling him the same thing over and over, but it never seemed to make any sense to Naruto.

So Naruto sprinted through the village, grinning at the people who yelled at the crazy blonde kid who dodged and weaved through the crowded roads. Then, for more fun, he began using the replacement technique on random people in the crowd. Although the instructors had told him that the kawarimi couldn't work on people, Naruto was pretty sure that they were just telling him that so that he couldn't use it to prank people.

A fat lot of good it did them. Nothing was as amusing as hearing the reaction of someone who suddenly teleported across the road, without any warning.

Naruto's eyes widened when switched with yet another person. He could tell, as he did the technique, that it was a ninja. As they replaced each other, Naruto could sense the ninja's chakra. A patrolling chuunin, hopefully.

After a moment, Naruto decided that it wasn't a chuunin. At least, it seemed that way, judging from the sudden appearance of a blank, staring deer mask of an ANBU operative. Granted, this would make for great training, but the ANBU were always such sore losers that when they finally caught him, Naruto always ended up with what felt like broken bones. Not that they were really broken, of course. Broken bones didn't heal overnight, like his injuries did.

Naruto took off backwards, quickly racing back through the crowd. The ANBU caught up with ease, jumping to land in front of him. The man in the deer mask quickly reached out and grabbed... an old woman?

Naruto fled quickly, hoping that the nice old lady wouldn't mind too much.

He felt the ANBU growing closer, a chakra so large that it was obvious even to Naruto, and decided to kawarimi across an alley and into the next street over. He cursed silently when he felt several more large chakras moving around quickly. Deer must have called for backup.

When they began to near his location, Naruto jogged off towards the center of town. If he was lucky, he could drop in to see the old man, whose office functioned as a 'base' of sorts in Naruto's game with the ANBU.

Suddenly an ANBU in a dog masked dropped down in front of him. Naruto flinched, but just before the ANBU could reach him, he switched with a dog nearby. Hearing the ANBU curse quietly, Naruto quickly replaced himself with a guy standing down at the intersection of street a hundred or so yards away, and continued running toward the Hokage tower.

But the ANBU were not far behind. Knowing that his time was short, Naruto dove into an alley and henged into a crumpled up piece of newspaper.

As expected, Dog showed up after a moment, and glanced around the alley. He chucked a few kunai at the trash cans there, which rang hollowly as they fell over.

Naruto felt the wash of chakra that meant that the ANBU was dispelling genjutsu, such as his henge. But, as seemed to happen every time, Naruto's henge held. It wasn't supposed to, Naruto knew that much. It was supposed to be the most basic illusion, easily destroyed or seen through by any ninja. Maybe it was because Naruto messed it up all the time. He knew that he was supposed to be molding his chakra some other way, but he had stopped messing with it once the technique seemed to work.

For a basic technique, it required quite a lot of, uh, twisting of his chakra, if that was the right word. Darned if he was gonna pay attention in class to figure out what the word for that was.

One way or another, the ANBU couldn't see him, and stalked off. After a minute, Naruto dropped the henge and raced the rest of the distance to the Hokage tower.

Henging himself into Dog's appearance, he walked boldly up the stairs and towards the old man's office. The ANBU guards at the door eyed him suspiciously for a moment, and Naruto felt the familiar pulse of chakra as they attempted, and failed, to dispel his illusion. They relaxed, the one on the left muttering, "How does that damn demon elude the ANBU every time? Too smart for his own good." The other ANBU opened the door.

Naruto ignored the guy, who must have been talking about a mission Dog was supposed to be getting back from, and walked into the office. The door shut silently behind him.

Taking the long strides of an ANBU officer, Naruto bowed low before the Hokage, who seemed rather amused. "Ah, ANBU-san. No success? I keep telling you not to underestimate Naruto-kun. If he's not book-smart, he makes up for it with cleverness."

Smiling under his henged mask, Naruto monotoned, "No success."

Sarutobi was about to speak when chakra flared just outside the door, and the sound of clanging kunai rang in the air. Dull thuds soon followed, the sound of flesh hitting flesh. Suddenly the door burst into splinters, and one of the ANBU guards flew into the room and hit the back wall with a sickening crunch.

Scared stiff at the threat of violence, but even more scared of being caught now that there was serious trouble, Naruto played the part of an ANBU, the Hokage's elite guard, moving between the doorway and the Hokage. Naruto hoped to Kami that he didn't have to face anything dangerous.

The other guard suddenly flew across the room to join his comrade in a heap on the floor, and the mysterious foe entered the room.

It was Dog. Naruto and Dog locked eyes for a single moment, before the real ANBU charged.

Panicking, Naruto did the only thing that he could think of, switching himself with a picture on the wall next to the door. But that meant that he would be leaving the Hokage open! Using another kawarimi so quickly that it barely worked, Naruto switched with Dog. The attacking ANBU appeared facing the wall, upside down, and retaining all of his previous momentum, while Naruto skidded across the Hokage's desk, scattering papers everywhere before he fell off the desk and rolled over by the ceiling-high windows. Dog grunted in exasperation as he hit the wall and fell to the ground.

However, he was not in ANBU for nothing. Dog quickly sprang to his feet and launched himself at Naruto. But before he could get far, he was stopped by the room's third occupant, the third Hokage. One quick, surprise chop to the neck, and Dog collapsed to the ground in a heap.

Now Naruto was even more frightened than before. He had always known, intellectually, that the Hokage was supposed to be the strongest ninja in the village, but to see the old man suddenly appear and knock out an ANBU was terrifying.

Before he could even think about what he was doing, his instinct for self-preservation flung his body through the window. The Hokage's stiff-wristed chop, meant to strike his neck, instead hit him in the back, causing Naruto to flip and twist wildly in mid-air as he fell from the window.

Landing in a heap on the ground, Naruto was vaguely aware that he was in excruciating pain. Breaking through a window was rather painful, as the window was still closed at the time, and the glass was no where near as fragile as most movies made it appear. Not to mention falling several stories and landing on his back. Yet somehow, his fear overpowered his pain and exhaustion, allowing him to run like heck away from the Hokage tower, ignored by the ANBU who were rushing to the Hokage's assistance.

Once he figured he was far enough away, Naruto released his henge and collapsed on a rooftop, still breathing heavily from the stress of the whole encounter. He wondered vaguely, as he often did, how much chakra he had left. Something was wrong with his sense of remaining chakra, because he knew that he should be running out by now. Everything he had ever learned in class, from the couple of times he been paying attention, told him that using what was probably a few techniques in a row should make you low on chakra.

Oh well. Nothing ever seemed to work the way it was supposed to. His henges never dispelled like they were supposed to. His Kawarimis worked in ways they were not supposed to. Why shouldn't his chakra act up, too? Probably he would find out how much he had left just after he used too much, and died from chakra depletion or something. For now, maybe he could just enjoy the sunset...

A light footstep on the rooftop made Naruto flinch so hard he cracked his head on the tile roofing. Leaping to his feet, and ignoring the pain, Naruto crouched, ready to spring away at half a second's notice.

Mizuki laughed out loud. "Calm down, Naruto. It's just me."

Seating himself on the edge of the building, Mizuki cleared his throat. "So, Naruto, I think you heard me earlier, when I said I thought you deserved to pass?"

Naruto nodded cautiously, waiting for his pulse to stop hammering in his head.

"Well, I pulled a few strings. I can't just pass you, but we've devised another sort of test that you can take to graduate. One that doesn't require knowing any techniques at all, though they might help."

Naruto's eyes widened, his mouth stretched into his typical grin, and he nodded excitedly, all suspicion forgotten.

Mizuki continued. "This will be quite hard, since it is a make-up test. What you have to do is this: Wait until after the sun has gone down. Then go get a scroll from the Hokage's personal library. We painted it with the name 'Scroll of Forbidden Techniques.' All you have to do is get this scroll, and escape into the forest outside the village, without getting caught."

"Alright! I can do it, Mizuki-sensei! You can count on it!"

Mizuki smirked. "Good luck. I'll come find you out in the forest once I hear that the scroll is missing, okay? Be careful, Naruto. They'll be guarding it against you just like they would against any enemy ninja."

"Yeah, yeah, you said it was gonna be hard, whatever. See you tonight!"

As Naruto bounded away, Mizuki rolled his eyes. Easy as pie.

* * *

Once he felt it was sufficiently dark, Naruto henged into a civilian and walked toward the library. First, he needed to look around and see where the best way to get in was.

As he walked by, he took note of the many windows on the second floor, and the shadows underneath the eaves where the guards were doubtlessly hiding. It didn't look like he would be able to sneak in, even if he was much more stealthy than he was now.

So, Naruto switched to plan B, which was pretty much what he thought he would end up doing anyway.

* * *

The two guards knelt next to each other in the shadows, eying the scene warily.

"Do you think we should do something? I mean, she's been there for almost fifteen minutes now. What if she's passed out?"

"Shut up, you fat bastard. You just want to go and give her mouth-to-mouth."

"And the only reason you're saying that is because you want to do it yourself."

"... So, maybe we should both go check it out?"

"Sounds like a plan."

Sufficiently distracted by a busty, female Naruko which had 'collapsed' in the road, the two guards never noticed a boy in a bright orange jumpsuit creep not-so-stealthily into the library.

* * *

Naruto grunted in frustration as he knelt and sifted through the dozens of scrolls stored on racks in the room. It was this room that the scroll was supposed to be in, right? Pulling out what felt like the thousandth scroll, Naruto was quite pleased to find it titled "Scroll of Forbidden Techniques." Tying the scroll to his back, he rose to leave.

Hearing a soft footstep, Naruto whirled around to face the newcomer.

Sarutobi raised one eyebrow, surprised to find Naruto would be attempting to steal the scroll. There had been reports that someone was going to attempt, which was why Sarutobi had come to move it elsewhere. The scroll, until recently hidden in plain sight, had been discovered somehow.

And now Naruto was apparently in on the plot. Or, more likely, duped into stealing it for someone else. On top of that, as he stood watching Naruto's face flicker between panic and determination, he was for some reason reminded of the impostor ANBU which had visited him earlier today, though he couldn't put his finger on why.

Naruto was frozen in indecision. It made sense for the Hokage to be involved in a special exception test, but how was Naruto going to get away this time? He had barely escaped from the office with a head start of about a whole second and ten feet. Now the old man was standing between Naruto and the window.

Suddenly, he knew what to do.

Sarutobi opened his mouth to ask Naruto what, exactly, the genin was doing here so late at night. But at that moment, the blonde formed several seals for a technique the Hokage did not recognize, and was suddenly surrounded by a cloud of smoke.

The smoke slowly cleared, revealing a very attractive, very well-endowed and very nude female Naruko, whose unmentionable portions were only barely covered by thin wisps of smoke that lingered unnaturally long in the air. The tall blonde babe winked playfully and blew a kiss toward the old man.

The Hokage smirked. How had Naruto gotten smart enough to throw in extra seals to hide the fact that he was using the basic one-seal henge? Rolling his eyes, he reached forward to grab Naruto through the henge. Despite the change in appearance, the henge did not change the subject's actual physical properties.

It was for this reason that the Hokage was quite surprised to have his hand stopped about half a foot in front of where Naruto should have been. Instead of grabbing a handful of orange jacket, the Third found himself groping the soft, malleable breasts of the blonde beauty before him.

Naruko moaned loudly and arched her back, pushing her breasts toward the Hokage.

Moments later, Naruto opened a window, jumped out and made for the forest, feeling only slightly bad about leaving the village leader unconscious in a pool of his own blood. Mizuki-sensei hadn't said there were any limits on techniques he could use, right?

* * *

Mizuki smirked as he listened to the quick instructions from the Hokage. Naruto had stolen the forbidden scroll, and so Mizuki and about two dozen other chuunin and jounin were being sent to find and retrieve both Naruto and the scroll.

The only thing odd was the the Hokage had not a word to say against the two chuunin who had been guarding the scroll in the first place. In fact, Mizuki would almost swear that the Hokage looked positively sheepish when he glanced in their direction. What on earth could have happened that the Hokage was willing to let a pair of chuunin get away with letting the worst genin on record sneak past them, apparently still dressed in his garish orange jumpsuit.

Within less than a minute, the Hokage finished outlining the areas to be searched, and dismissed the assembled ninja to begin their search.

Mizuki ran about a block in the direction he was assigned, then stealthily darted off toward the forest. In the confusion, no one would notice one missing chuunin.

Mizuki failed to notice that his teaching partner, Iruka snapped his head around as the white-haired chuunin passed, and was soon following not far behind.

* * *

Naruto wondered if it were just luck, or if maybe this was just his sort of thing. Maybe reading was easier than listening.

Because there could hardly be another explanation for why Naruto had only managed to learn two techniques in three years at the Academy, and yet had just taught himself a technique he had been looking at for less than an hour now.

And what a cool technique it was! Shadow clone! Just like the regular clone, but it was real! It could hit stuff, and pick stuff up, and everything! According to the scroll, Naruto would even know what the clone had seen when the clone dispelled.

Thoroughly enthused about this new technique, Naruto skipped all the boring stuff about evenly dividing the user's chakra, different variations, mental strain warnings and why it was forbidden blah blah blah. Standing up, he formed the seal and pushed in a bit of chakra. Several dozen clones appeared around him with poofs of smoke. Grinning, Naruto mentally dismissed the clones in the way that the scroll had specified, and they all disappeared just as quickly as they had appeared. Naruto smiled as the memories of each clone came back to him. It was so weird, to see, in his mind's eye, one side of a tree, while he was standing on the other side.

Sitting down to teach himself another cool jutsu, Naruto opened the scroll again, but was interrupted when Mizuki dropped from a tree to land beside him.

"I see you've gotten the scroll, Naruto. Great job!"

"Thanks, Mizuki-sensei! Man, you got here fast. I've only had time to learn one technique!"

The chuunin had to wrest his face under control to keep his eyes from bugging out of their sockets while his jaw dropped. This incompetent moron had already learned a forbidden technique? For crying out loud, these were techniques that Mizuki was stealing for Orochimaru to learn! What on earth...?

Forcing down his disbelief, Mizuki managed a grin, and held out a hand. "Let me make sure you got the right scroll, there, and then we'll go back and get you your headband."

Before either of them could move, a kunai landed on the ground between them. Mizuki sprang back and faced the intruder, while Naruto fell over backwards in surprise.

The white-haired chuunin scowled as he glared at the newcomer. Of course this idiot would follow him. Why hadn't he thought of this before?

"Don't give him that scroll, Naruto! He tricked you! He's really a traitor, trying to steal that for someone working against the village!"

"What do you care, Iruka? I know you hate him as much as I do. He killed your parents, after all."

"Don't say anymore, Mizuki! You know the law!"

Naruto looked between, them, confused. What was going on? Mizuki was a traitor? And they said that he killed Iruka's parents, whom Naruto had never met?

"I think he deserves to know, don't you think so, Naruto?"

"Know what?"

Iruka opened his mouth to speak, but was cut off as Mizuki continued.

"You are the Kyuubi, the demon who attacked Konoha, killing thousands and thousands of people, including Iruka's parents. That's why everyone hates you. That's why the teachers never taught you the actual techniques. That's why we always rigged the exams to fail you. That's why you can't buy any clothes that don't make you a walking target. It's why your apartment is constantly vandalized, why bricks are thrown in your windows, and why everyone you've ever met wishes you were dead!"

Naruto's mouth hung open, and tears silently trailed down his cheeks.

"He's lying, Naruto!" The blonde turned slowly to look at Iruka. "I don't hate you! The Hokage doesn't hate you! And you are not the Kyuubi! The Fourth just sealed the demon inside of you!"

Mizuki frowned, and decided to stop wasting time. Unhooking one of his over sized shuriken from his back, he flung it straight at demon brat.

Still in shock, Naruto did not even attempt to dodge. He closed his eyes and waited for it.

And waited for it. Hearing a pained grunt, he looked up to see Iruka standing in front of him, arms stretched out protectively, and the giant shuriken sticking out of his back.

"Run, Naruto. Don't let him... get that scroll. And don't let him get you!"

Naruto took off.

* * *

Mizuki cursed in frustration. This was supposed to be incredibly straightforward. Have the brat get the scroll. Take the scroll. Kill the kid. Report back to Orochimaru.

Why, oh why, did it have to go so wrong? Now he was ten minutes into his search of the nearby forest area, looking for that damned quick little demon brat. It wouldn't be too long before someone sensed him or Naruto, or maybe even Iruka, out here, and came to investigate. He didn't have this sort of time.

Catching a flash of yellow, Mizuki pivoted and launched off a branch, landed one tree behind the idiot kid.

The idiot was fast, he give him that. But all Mizuki really needed was the scroll. Chucking a kunai at the strap, he was unpleasantly surprised to see the kunai go right through. A henge.

Concentrating momentarily, Mizuki pushed a bit of chakra out, dispelling the illusion. He'd been chasing Iruka. And Iruka didn't have the scroll.

Growing angrier by the second. Mizuki sprang forward with rage-fueled energy, easily overtaking the injured Iruka. A quick punch knocked his former comrade to the ground, where, too injured to move, the young man just propped himself up against a tree trunk.

The white-haired chuunin landed softly a few yards away. "You are going to regret ever sticking up for that stupid demon, Iruka," Mizuki growled as he pulled out his second giant shuriken. He pulled back to hurl the weapon to decapitate his helpless enemy, when he heard the familiar whistle of a kunai flying through air.

He easily dodged the poorly thrown projectile, and looked over to see Naruto drop from the trees. The blonde boy spoke shouted, "I won't let you hurt Iruka-sensei, you bastard!"

Mizuki laughed. "You and what army, genin?"

Slipping off the scroll, Naruto formed a single seal. "Kage Bunshin No Jutsu!"

Mizuki almost died of fright. Surrounding him were over two hundred shadow clones. He knew of this technique. And for a boy to be able to make even one, let alone more than that, was monstrous. But hundreds? The kid should have died after a dozen. The chakra cost alone was enormous, forming clones from pure chakra, not earth or water or any physical substance. And then the fact that the user's remaining chakra was divided evenly between every clone. That meant that this blonde buffoon had used at least two times more chakra than Mizuki had, just to form the clones. And then his chakra was split between all of them.

The boy had one two-hundredth of whatever chakra he had left _after_ using the technique. And he didn't even look tired!

And though Mizuki was a chuunin, even he could not take on dozens of genin all at the same time. He was done for.

Beginning to hyperventilate, Mizuki prayed that he would fall unconscious before the beating started. Alas, the powers that be tend not to answer the prayers of the wicked. Screams echoed in the forest for miles around, as Naruto's clones beat the unresisting traitor into unconsciousness.

* * *

The assembled Academy graduates looked skeptically at Naruto as he walked into the room, his goggles replaced with a shiny new hitai-ate.

"Who'd you steal that from, dobe?" Sasuke asked. "I heard about just how bad you failed."

"Well, then you heard wrong, Sasuke! I passed, and I've got the hitai-ate to prove it! So there!"

Iruka walked into the room, holding a large clipboard. "He's telling the truth, Sasuke. He passed an... alternate exam last night."

Confused and suspicious, Sasuke fell silent.

Once Naruto had taken his seat, Iruka cleared his throat, and began speaking in his 'official' voice. "Congratulations, graduates. You have passed the Academy final exam, and are now genin. Today, we will be announcing the three-man teams into which you have been separated." At this point, Iruka held up his clipboard. "Team 1 will be..."

Naruto spaced out. Who cared what the other teams were? Between that and reflecting on the total awesomeness of the fact that he had actually, finally graduated, Naruto paid zero attention until-

"Uzumaki Naruto."

He looked up.

"Haruno Sakura."

Naruto pumped a fist into the air. "Yes! Alright!"

Twin glares from Sakura and Iruka pinned him back into his seat

"And Uchiha Sasuke."

"FUCK!"

Iruka whirled on Naruto, a vein in his forehead twitching.

"You mean FUCK YES!" Sakura cheered, obviously glad to be on a team with Sasuke-kun.

Iruka just pinched the bridge of his nose, willing away his headache, before pretending he hadn't heard anything as he returned to reading the list and Naruto returned to spacing out. "Your instructor with be Hatake Kakashi. Team 8..."

A minutes or two later, and Iruka finished reading the names. "Alright. Your jounin instructors should be here to pick you guys up any minute now. They'll tell you when and where you'll be meeting for practice and such. Good luck!"

Iruka walked out of the classroom. Immediately after he left, several older ninja walked in and grabbed their teams. Naruto waited impatiently for one to introduce themselves as Kakashi.

But within a minute, only the members of team 7 remained in the classroom. Naruto groaned. "Figures I'd get screwed with the one sensei who always shows up late."

Sasuke and Sakura just rolled their eyes. The idiot was so egotistical. Why would anyone go out of their way to do something like that just to him? It was absurd.

But it made sense to Naruto. In spite of being a traitor, Mizuki had spoken mostly truth during their encounter. Iruka later admitted that most of the teachers at the Academy had hated him, though Iruka said he hadn't known that they were sabotaging his instruction. Everything Mizuki had to say about people's treatment of him made sense.

And it made so much more sense now, in retrospect, why he could never learn anything. His books always disappeared, probably courtesy of some vindictive teacher, Naruto realized. He never learned the right techniques because the instructors taught him incorrectly, and kept changing whatever seals they did show him.

And he had never graduated, because the final test was always picked so that it was a technique that Naruto didn't know. Not that this was difficult, but it explained why the final test had been changed from the henge, which it had been for years, to the bunshin.

Naruto stirred restlessly as he waited for their stupid sensei. They guy was already 5 minutes late! What kind of guy was he, willing to make such an impression on his students?

Getting rather bored with waiting, Naruto began to pace around the classroom. The other two followed him with their eyes, just as bored. Just then, Naruto got a wicked idea. Grabbing a chalkboard eraser, he patted it in the piles of chalk dust on the tray under the board. Then, going over to the door, he placed it only slightly ajar, and placed the eraser on the door, leaning against the wall. When their tardy sensei finally arrived, the eraser would fall on his head.

Well, probably not, since it was supposed to be a jounin. But maybe he would be distracted. If their sensei was weird enough to be this late, maybe he would be weird enough to overlook the obvious.

Naruto just couldn't wait to see this Kakashi guy's face.

Two hours later...

"Hm?"

The soft sound roused Naruto from his slumber on top of a desk. Rubbing his eyes as he sat up, he saw an older man in a mask, with his hitai-ate tilted to cover one eye. He had silvery hair, and sitting on top of that: a chalkboard eraser.

Naruto immediately began laughing, stopping only when he fell of the desk.

"Ow," he muttered, sitting up on the floor. "So what took you so damn long, sensei?! Do have any idea how long we've been waiting here?"

"Two hours, 14 minutes, and 30 seconds as of riiiiiiiiiiiight... now."

Sakura put her face in her hands. Perfect grades in the Academy, on a team with Sasuke-kun, and they got this... _thing_ for a teacher? Naruto was a big enough caveat to balance out the benefit of having Sasuke of her team, without throwing this guy into the mix.

Placing the eraser back under the chalkboard, Kakashi turned to face them. "My first impression of you guys is..." He looked contemplative for a moment. "I hate you."

Turning toward the door, he called over his shoulder, "Meet me on the roof."

Once they were all there, Kakashi cleared his throat. "Alright, guys, why don't you introduce yourselves. Say your likes, dislikes, dreams, whatever."

Looking unsure, Sakura asked, "Could you go first, to show us an example?"

Sighing, Kakashi monotoned, "My name is Hatake Kakashi. I like... uh... heh heh... certain things. I don't like... well, you guys for one, but other than that... I don't really feel like telling you my dreams."

Nodding to himself, Kakashi motioned to Sakura. "Why don't you go next, Sakura?"

Naruto choked in indignation. "WHAT?! You didn't tell us anything about yourself!"

Kakashi acted as though he had not heard, and continued to look at Sakura expectantly.

"Um... I like..." She glanced at Sasuke. "... being a ninja. I don't like Naruto, or stupid jounin-sensei who show up two hours late! My dream is to..." She glanced at Sasuke again. Said Uchiha never once looked at her, staring straight ahead as though watching something in the sky.

At Kakashi's prompting, Naruto cleared his throat to speak. "I'm Uzumaki Naruto! I like ramen, and ninja stuff! I don't like late senseis, the three minutes it takes to cook ramen, or idiots who are mean for no good reason! My dream is to become the strongest ninja ever, and to become Hokage!"

Kakashi nodded, and motioned Sasuke to speak. "I am Uchiha Sasuke. I have no particular likes or dislikes. My dream, is to kill a certain man."

Casting a long look at Sasuke, Kakashi began speaking in his lecture tone. "Now that you guys have graduated, we need to see how much you really learned. So tomorrow, meet me at training ground 16 at six in the morning for some survival exercises." He stood up and began to walk away. "Oh, and don't eat breakfast. You'll throw up."

* * *

Naruto awoke at seven as usual, and ate breakfast. It was only around eight, as he walked out the door to go the Academy, that he remembered that he had graduated, and that he was supposed to have been at training ground 16 two hours ago.

Screaming curses, Naruto sprinted all the way there, only to discover that Kakashi had yet to arrive. This, of course, did not prevent Sakura from venting her anger on Naruto for being late.

"You stupid idiot! You're two hours late! What are you thinking?!"

Sasuke mumbled, "You know, if Kakashi isn't here, then it doesn't really, matter, does it?"

Sakura opened and closed her mouth, stunned that _her_ Sasuke-kun would stick up for this... blonde freak. But if Sasuke-kun said it was alright, then it was alright.

Naruto looked at Sasuke, one eyebrow raised, but the Uchiha pointedly ignored him. Sighing, Naruto was about to sit down to wait, when Kakashi walked into view.

Springing to her feet, Sakura screamed, "You're late!"

Kakashi's one eye curved as he smiled. "Sorry. I got got lost on my way here, and there was this old woman who needed help crossing the street, so I stopped to help her, and... yeah."

A vein on Sakura's forehead began to throb.

"Anyway, now that we're all here, we may as well get started. Today, I will be testing you to see if you are really ready to become ninja."

"But Kakashi-sensei," Sakura whined, "we already passed all the tests for the Academy. We _are_ ninja now. Besides, you said we were going to be doing survival training!"

Kakashi smirked. "That was just to see if you could learn the techniques and the tactics. This test will show whether or not you can apply them in real life. So in a way, this is survival training, testing you to see if you would survive on a real mission."

Pulling out two bells, he held them up for a moment before fastening them to his belt. "To pass this test, you need to take a bell from me before noon. If you don't get a bell by then, you will be sent back to the Academy."

"What?" Both Naruto and Sakura asked, shocked. Sasuke merely narrowed his eyes.

"I told you, this will see if you have what it takes to survive in the real world. If you can't, you have to go back to learn some more. That's just how it works."

"But sensei," Sakura asked, "why are there only two bells?"

Kakashi chuckled. "That's because only two of you will be passing. The other will just have to go back to the Academy."

Sasuke's eyes widened, and Sakura gasped. Naruto jumped forward, reaching for a bell, when he was grabbed by Kakashi, who had suddenly appeared behind him. "I didn't say go yet, Naruto."

Pushing Naruto back over by the other two, Kakashi pulled an alarm clock out of his pouch, and set it on a training post. "This alarm will go off at noon. Now, are you ready? GO!"

Sakura dashed into the trees and hid herself, trying to think of a plan quickly. Sasuke did the same, while Naruto charged Kakashi.

The jounin rolled his eye at the incoming genin. Kids never seemed to learn. Well, maybe another year in the Academy would do him some good. Looking at the kid's grades, it was a wonder that he had been allowed to pass, even with special circumstances.

When Naruto went for a punch, Kakashi grabbed the arm, whirled the blonde around and flung him into a tree. "Naruto, do you really think you can beat a jounin all by yourself?" Kakashi hoped this wasn't too obvious a hint at what he was trying to teach here.

Getting up, Naruto formed a single seal. "Kage bunshin no jutsu!" A dozen clones formed around him.

Kakashi's visible eye widened. What. On. Earth. Was. Going. On. Kakashi knew that technique, having learned it from the legendary Fourth, back before Minato had become Hokage. But it was an incredibly taxing technique. Even those who knew it rarely used it, because of the incredible chakra cost. Every clone cost a massive amount of chakra, to form a corporeal body from nothing but chakra, unlike elemental clones. And then the user's chakra was divided evenly among the clones. So making even a single shadow clone cost more than half of the user's chakra.

And that was chakra just lost, chakra that vanished when the clone was hit or dispelled. Granted, there were numerous advantages for shadow clones, but in Kakashi's opinion, they were not even close to being worth the massive cost in chakra that could be lost in a single hit. Shadow clones, unlike any other kind of clone, could use techniques using the chakra they had, and gave their memories back to the user upon death or dispelling.

But how on earth had a genin known this technique, how had he been able to use it, to create so many clones, and not to die immediately afterwards from chakra depletion?

His thoughts were cut off when the clones charged forward. Shaking off his hesitation, Kakashi waited for them to come closer. Even if for some reason Naruto knew this advanced technique, shadow clones had only the skill of the original, and so Kakashi could dispatch them all easily with basic taijutsu.

When he hit the first clone, both Kakashi and Naruto were greatly surprised. Naruto, because he had not bothered to read the rest of the scroll, and Kakashi because he was in further awe of the sheer amount of chakra that such a clone must have to become one of these.

Kakashi knew that when a shadow clone was being created, the user could push extra chakra into it, to give it more energy for techniques and such. If the clone had a certain, very large amount, of chakra when it was hit, instead of dispelling, it would explode violently, with the radius and power of the explosion determined by the amount of chakra left in the clone. In his entire life, Kakashi had seen only two exploding clones, both used by the Fourth Hokage, who must have had the most chakra of anyone Kakashi had ever known.

Of course, the amount of chakra required for such a clone was immense. Even Kakashi could probably only make two, if he spent all of his chakra on them. And the explosions created by these clones would not be much bigger than the average exploding tag.

Kakashi realized all of this when he struck the first clone. For a fraction of a second, the clones eyes and mouth shone with a blue light, before the clone detonated.

Naruto was, of course, unaware of the clones nature. He had only learned this technique the other day, and Mizuki hadn't fought back at all, so Naruto had never seen a clone hit by anything before. Unthinkingly, he had sent them all as a group. So when the first clone, right in front of Kakashi, exploded, it hit every other clone with its massively powerful explosion.

And so every other clone, for a brief fraction of a second, sailed away, eyes and mouths glowing, before they, too, detonated.

Kakashi, utterly unprepared, had only enough time to hold up his arms before the enormous explosion engulfed him. He flew back, ricocheting off one tree before hitting another square on. He fell to the ground, unconscious.

Naruto's eyes were wide. "Kakashi-sensei! Kakashi-sensei!" Naruto ran up to see if he was alright. "Kakashi-sensei, are you alright?! Kakashi-sensei!"

Naruto grabbed the jounin by the vest and shook him. "Kakashi-sensei! Wake up!"

Sasuke and Sakura, who had been watching from the trees, stared in shock. What on earth had just happened? When had this stupid dead last, who could not even form a bunshin, learned how to defeat a jounin, even if on a fluke?

Naruto continued to shake the unconscious silver-haired jounin. "Hey, wake up! I'm really sorry! I don't know what happened!"

So engrossed was he in what was happening, that he never noticed three ninja appear some distance behind him. Three ANBU of the Root division, under the same standing orders of everyone else in Root: If an opportunity arose such that the demon could be discredited, or better yet, killed, that opportunity was to be taken. And here was the perfect setup. The demon had attacked his jounin sensei, obviously with the demon's power, since no genin could use such a powerful technique. Thus, he was a danger to others, and must be eliminated.

One of the ANBU nodded to another, who left to inform Danzou of their surprisingly good news. The third drew a kunai in silence, and walked forward to end the demon's threat to Konoha while his partner shooed away the other two genin.

Naruto sensed something, however, and turned to see what it was. The ANBU quickly sprang forward, so as not to miss this opportunity. Danzou would be furious if they botched this.

But the ANBU was not quite quick enough. Underestimating this genin allowed the blonde boy to use a single technique before the ANBU appeared: the Kage Bunshin.

Several dozen clones appeared around Naruto, blocking the way for the Root agent, who was forced to leap over their heads. This additional delay gave Naruto time to just barely complete a second technique, right, immediately before the kunai sank deep into his chest, and through his heart.

The Kawarimi.

Of course, Naruto was no genius, and so in the heat of the moment, he had switched with the first thing he saw: a clone. So the kunai pierced deeply into a clone, whose mouth and eyes immediately opened wide, shining with a bright blue light.

Naruto had neither the time nor the presence of mind to move away before the clone exploded in a massive fireball, which then blasted every other clone away, before, a fraction of a second later, they, too, exploded in equally large balls of fire.

The poor ANBU caught in the middle never had a chance. Not only was he right next to the explosion, as Kakashi had been and still was again, but he had a kunai held out in front of himself. The force of the explosion blasted the kunai out of his hand, and directly into his face.

The second ANBU, far enough away to protect himself, waited for the smoke to clear. What he saw made him boil with rage. His partner lay dead on the ground, the butt of a kunai barely sticking out of the cracked mask, and blood was slowly beginning to pool around the fallen man's head.

Meanwhile, the jounin Kakashi appeared to be only slightly burnt. Of course, this made sense, since he had been pressed against the tree, and so the force of the explosion had passed right through him. Without being thrown back to hit anything, or having anything thrown at him, Kakashi had survived the second explosion virtually unscathed.

And the demon was nowhere to be seen. The ANBU quickly searched the immediate vicinity. If he blew this now, Danzou would have his head. Just when he was about to panic, he found the idiot, orange-clad genin, dusting himself off almost two hundred yards from the blast.

Angry enough to momentarily forget his Root training, the ANBU growled. "Now you die, demon brat!" and leaped to attack.

Naruto turned, wide-eyed, and took the incoming fist right in the face. He had barely enough time to hit the ground before the Root agent appeared in front of him, kunai at the ready. The ANBU ripped the blade across Naruto's face so hard that the white bone of his skull was visible for an instant, before it was covered in swiftly flowing blood.

Again, the ANBU cut, this time across Naruto's chest, slicing through cloth and flesh and muscle to reveal ribs and sinew. Now that he was being seriously attacked by an elite, Naruto didn't have a chance.

Naruto screamed out loud, though the the movement only intensified the pain in his face and chest, as the ANBU took his time making the the brat suffer. After the thousands this demon had killed, as well as his teammate, this monstrous evil in the form of a child would _suffer_.

After a minute, the elite ninja stood to survey his work. Grinning with sadistic pleasure under his mask, he looked over the boy's torn muscles, broken limbs and ribs, bleeding gashes and gaping stab wounds. The puddle of blood that surrounded the blonde boy, slowly soaking into the ground, seemed almost larger than the body that had once housed it. The blonde, long ago too injured to shout, now lay unconscious in his own gore.

So absorbed was the ANBU that he never noticed the ninja who appeared behind him. Granted, he would probably not have sensed this particular ninja even if he had been carefully keeping watch.

The new arrival took a kunai in his right hand, while he dispelled the genjutsu hiding his presence with the left hand that hung out from within his coat. The ANBU had barely registered the new presence before a kunai lodged itself between two vertebrae in his neck.

Paying the falling body no further heed, Uchiha Itachi moved to the edge of the deep crimson pool of blood surrounding the young, blonde jinkuurichi, and watched in muted interest as the boy's body repaired itself with unnatural quickness, vastly faster than even most medical techniques could hope to repair such damage.

A patient man, Itachi waited almost an hour, long enough for the boy to heal completely. Soon after, Naruto woke.

Shaking his head, the young genin raised himself into a sitting position, and was in the middle of yawning and trying to remember why he was in the forest, when he noticed the older teen standing right in front of him.

Naruto jumped back, a shout forming in his chest, only to slip on the blood-soaked mud underneath, and fall back down with a short grunt.

Suddenly, Naruto remembered everything. The bell test, the explosions, and the ANBU...

Itachi decided that he didn't feel like watching the young blonde hyperventilate into another bout of unconsciousness, so he interrupted the blonde's thoughts with a question.

"How has life been treating you lately, Naruto-kun?"

Naruto paused mid-horror, to stare into red eyes. "Huh? Who are you?" The orange-clad genin seemed vaguely apprehensive, much less so than Itachi had anticipated. The renegade Uchiha had heard that this particular jinkuurichi had a hard life, but to be so used to this sort of thing that he didn't even question the appearance an unknown ninja...

With practiced ease, Itachi moved his speculations to the back of his mind. "I am Uchiha Itachi. I came here to-"

"Whoa! Are you related to Sasuke?!"

Itachi took a slow breath, and then continued as if he had not heard Naruto's outburst. "I came here to take you with me."

"... So are you related to Sasuke?"

Clearing his throat, the missing-nin decided to be blunt, since roundabout measures seemed lost on this particular ninja. "We need to leave soon, Naruto-kun. Even now, I do not doubt that more ANBU are on their way here, and I happen to know that they will be under orders to kill you on sight. So either you can come with me, or you can stay here and die."

Naruto scrunched up his face in confusion. "What? Why would they do that? I mean, they hurt me all the time, but no one's ever tried to kill me. Besides, it's not like I haven't been in trouble before. They'll just yell at me, and then everything will go back to normal."

"Why do want to stay here, Naruto-kun? What does this village have to offer you?"

"I'm gonna be Hokage!"

Ignoring the non sequitur, Itachi continued. "Almost everyone you know hates you here. They hurt you and ignore you and hope that you die. Right now, some very powerful ninja are on their way to kill you, because they think you killed two ANBU members." Itachi felt no need to explain how he had learned this information, from clones spying on the secret council meeting held half an hour after the Root agent had reported back, and the council's action to send out hunter-nin, suggested by Danzou, since the two ANBU 'defending themselves and Kakashi from the demon' had yet to report back.

Knowing what Naruto would ask before the blonde even opened his mouth to do so, Itachi added, "You will not be able to convince them to believe you. They will not stop to listen to you. Come with me, or die."

"But..."

"Now."

"But Konoha is my home."

Itachi's usual indifference cracked for just a moment. This child was so used to this treatment that he preferred it to some alternative? If Itachi had been in the blonde's place, he would have jumped for an opportunity to leave.

He quickly recovered his emotionless mask. "I will take you to a new home, Naruto-kun. A home where people will not hate you, or be cruel to you. A home where you can live like a normal person, where you are treated just like everyone else."

Itachi thought he saw a flash of a contemplative look on Naruto's face, but it was covered by a cheesy grin so quickly that he had trouble believing he had seen it in the first place.

"Alright, Itachi-kun."

Jumping out of the blood, Naruto landed at Itachi's side. Itachi took off at a quick pace, and was pleasantly surprised to see that Naruto needed no prompting to follow.

"While you are with us, you will refer to me and the others you will meet once we are there with the suffix -san, to keep them from being offended. Do you understand?"

"Whatever you say, Itachi-kun-san."

Deciding that it wasn't worth it to correct the young blonde, Itachi just kept a quick pace, keeping track of the last known location of the hunter-nin squad, based on the knowledge he received from his clones. With any luck, Itachi could get Naruto to move fast enough so that the hunter-nin would overtake them at night, allowing Itachi to neutralize them while Naruto slept. That way, he wouldn't have to make Naruto any more of a target than he already was.

Casting a glance at the oddly silent blonde following just behind him, Itachi picked up the pace. If he noticed Naruto frequently turning to look back, he didn't say anything.

* * *

The Hokage knew that anger rarely solved problems, and that it not helping his high blood pressure that came with age, but these were the least of his worries.

The Council had, without his permission, and without even notifying him, declared Naruto a missing-nin and sent a hunter-nin squad after him with orders to kill, based on the report of a single ANBU. An agent that Sarutobi knew worked for Danzou's not-so-secret organization, Root. Of course, the hunter-nin selected for the mission were all Root agents, and so had left immediately, without even leaving word of where they had gone.

The old man had learned about Root long ago. Danzou was not nearly as competent as he believed himself to be, and Sarutobi had not become Hokage without learning to read between the lines and 'look underneath the underneath,' as Kakashi loved to say. But he had let the group go up to now, since they rarely did anything far out of protocol, and since Danzou had threatened in all but words to 'take care' of Naruto if the Hokage did anything against him. And since Danzou had been in a strong enough position on the Council to order the assassination of Naruto and pretty much get away with it, that had been that.

But all this was in the past now. Naruto was gone, perhaps even dead at this point. And so there was nothing Danzou could hold over his head.

Using a finger, he forced chakra into an invisible seal placed under his desk, the signal for all of his loyal ANBU to report to their secret meeting place. Fueled by grief and a growing rage, Sarutobi planned just how he would eliminate Danzou's nest of traitors once and for all.

It wouldn't be hard. Over the years, he had learned how to get information on Root. He knew every drop location and secret base in Konoha, and with his superior skills, it was child's play to sneak in and copy down whatever information he required. Armed with all the data he could ever want, Sarutobi left a clone in his office, and made his stealthy way to the meeting place.

* * *

Itachi frowned. According to his clones, the hunter-nin moved more quickly than he wished. They would be catching up very soon. Too soon for Itachi to take care of it without Naruto knowing, and too close to Konoha to hope that Kisame might be near to lend a hand. Frowning, he tilted his head to look at the blonde running beside him. Plan B, then.

"Naruto-kun, I need you to make a clone."

The young genin flinched, remembering what had happened the last two times he used that technique. "Um, I don't know if that would be a good-"

"Naruto-kun, there are people catching up to us, and so to help us get away, I need you to make one clone. Put as much chakra into it as you can."

Naruto waited for a moment for Itachi to stop, so that Naruto could pause to create a clone. But after a few moments, it became apparent that the older ninja expected him to do this on the run, so Naruto formed the seal and _pushed _all the chakra he could into a single clone.

Itachi was able to keep an even pace only because he was so experienced that running required no concentration whatsoever. It was considered a jounin level skill to be able to detect chakra used in techniques, because it was so hard to do, and because even techniques performed with the worst amount of control, and thus, the most wasted chakra, hardly gave off enough for trained experts to notice.

But here, a genin had used enough chakra in forming that one clone that it nearly took his breath away. Even a chuunin would have noticed the ridiculous amount of chakra that had gone on there, so much that the air around Naruto rippled, as if with heat.

A single clone popped into existence beside Naruto.

Putting his speculative thoughts aside with practiced ease, Itachi created a shadow clone of his own, and instructed Naruto to have his clone follow Itachi's, behind them, at a slower pace. Then Itachi picked up the pace. Naruto grunted a little with exertion as he sped up to match with the red-eyed man beside him. They soon left their clones long behind them.

Itachi waited for it. His own clone had more than enough chakra to use a few genjutsu on the pursuing ANBU or hunter-nin, to lure them all into one place. Then it would grab Naruto's clone, place it next to their pursuers, and stab it.

A minute later, a loud crashing sound, accompanied by a gentle rumble of the earth, and Itachi smirked. His clone's memories told him that it had worked like a charm. Hopefully that would be all they needed, since that had been more than half of Itachi's chakra.

Naruto gasped as he now 'remembered' what had happened there. "What?! All those people... Why did you..."

Itachi forced himself to realize that this was only a genin, who had never seen combat before, let alone death, until today. "It was necessary, Naruto-kun. Either we kill them, or they kill us."

"But couldn't you have knocked them out or something? I mean..."

Reminding himself that this was a normal child, and not a prodigy such as himself, Itachi tried to explain it in simpler terms. "It is far harder to render someone unconscious, than it is to kill them. To do that, we would have had to stay back there ourselves, and it would have been very dangerous for us. Also, this way we further discourage them from chasing us."

Itachi glanced at the genin, and, seeing that he understood, or at least accepted that explanation, fell back into silent contemplation. He hoped that Pein and Madara would not be too upset at his intervention, though, knowing them, they would be just fine with it. Acquiring the Kyuubi now as opposed to later made little difference in the end.

Hours later, Itachi decided that they had gone far enough for the day, and told Naruto to get some sleep. The young ninja, unused to such extended running, collapsed where he stood, asleep almost before he hit the ground. Itachi nearly smirked, and seated himself against a tree, and allowed himself to fall into a drowsing state, asleep enough to get some rest, yet awake enough to keep watch.

* * *

Naruto suddenly took in a large breath when he felt something poke his side. He opened his eyes slowly, and looked at the large, red-eyed man standing over him. Naruto's face became stern as he remembered the day before. Accidentally hurting Kakashi-sensei, then getting attacked by those ANBU, then running off with this guy who might be related to Sasuke.

* * *

**3.** This was going to go on to have Naruto as a member of Akatsuki (they only need all the demons to keep countries in check, since only a country with a demon would dare challenge other demons, so it made no difference whether Naruto joined or they extracted the Kyuubi) and something or other as they face off against a now out-of-control Root, Orochimaru, and maybe others.

**4. **I stopped writing on this because I got busy with work, and by the time I had free time to write much, I had forgotten most of this. Of my fragments, this is the most likely to be picked up at a later date. Or maybe Nightmare, which will probably be the next fragment posted. But please don't bug me to finish this.


	4. Nightmare

**1.**

He is in constant torture, he sees everyone he ever knew die a thousand times in a thousand different ways, every single day, he knows that he is at least a little insane. Can Naruto really be normal, while living in a never-ending nightmare? For this story, Naruto is subject to the Kyuubi at (almost) all times. (A play with the theory of Tsukiome and the Mengenkyo Sharingan: If the Mengengkyo is derived from the Kyuubi, as was hinted in the manga, then perhaps its most powerful techniques are also.) Basically, Naruto is under a permanent Tsukiome, and just learns to deal with it.

* * *

**2.**

Fire. Blades. Teeth. Claws. The sound of breaking bone, the tear of ripping flesh, the screams of a thousand dying innocents. A world so bloody that even the sky is tinged with red, with a moon dyed a deep crimson.

Wild animals tear at his flesh, while mocking villagers stab him and beat him and kill him. The ground is scorching hot, searing his exposed and shredded skin into a charred, blistered mess off blood and flesh. The air is so hot, so humid, and so heavy that he can scarcely breathe. It pushes upon him with relentless force; his weakened, battered and dying body cannot hope to even raise an arm to defend itself.

With his fading vision, he can see a pink-haired girl suffering a similar fate, only yards away. She screams and screams, cursing him for letting this happen to her, for subjecting her to this excruciating torture.

He wants to deny it. He wants to claim his innocence. He wants to explain that he, too, suffers this fate. He wants to tell her that it isn't him, but the demon inside, that is killing all of them. But his broken jaw cannot move. His ruptured lungs cannot expel the necessary breath.

All around him, the countless others, people he knows, people he's met, and people he has only ever seen writhe in agony, screaming and cursing his name, his parents and his ancestors. As far as his eyes can see, the barren, blood-red wasteland is filled with those who are dying, and those who wish they were dead.

He holds in a grunt as a wild, feral dog tears out a kidney with red-tinged fangs. It's slitted pupils glare mockingly at Naruto as it swallows the organ whole. The villagers identical eyes glow an orange-red as they continue to cut, slash and bludgeon him with various primitive weapons.

"Naruto? Are you even paying attention?"

"Huh?"

Iruka pinches the bridge of his nose, sighing loudly. "Naruto, you are never going to pass if you don't pay attention. Now, what did I just finish explaining?"

"Uh, you were talking about traps?" It comes out as a question, since he really has no idea.

"We finished talking about traps ten minutes ago, Naruto. Now we're onto kunai storage and maintenance. Please listen to what's going on, okay Naruto?" Iruka's voice takes on a faintly fatherly tone.

Naruto stretches his mouth side, showing his teeth in a cheerful smile. "Of course, Iruka-sensei!"

The other students in class roll their eyes at the obvious lie, but Iruka returns to talking about how to sharpen kunai, and how to keep them from rusting.

Naruto can't help that he can't pay attention. It's hard enough to stay aware of what is going on around him, let alone listen to what someone says, or to read books, or anything.

He tries to pay attention to Iruka, who is demonstrating the proper use of a whet stone, even as a sledgehammer comes down hard on his knee, shattering it into countless bone fragments that stab and cut his leg muscles and tendons.

Long, smooth strokes along the stone, moving the blade away from yourself, of course, so you don't accidentally cut yourself. Kunai need to be sharp enough to cut with very little pressure.

Unlike the scythe that stabs into his shoulder, separating the joint there. It is so dull, it tears instead of cutting, ripping apart skin and sinew in a pain that goes beyond describing. The radiant red eyes of the villager flicker with a sinister light as he twists the tool one way and other, prying off the arm as though with a crowbar. The point of the scythe digs against bone and muscle, deep inside.

It is so hard to pay attention in class. But Naruto knows he can't tell anyone why. He is already hated enough as it is. Shops refuse to sell to him, restaurants refuse to serve him and mothers warn their children to stay away from him. There is no way that anyone would react in a way other than horror and fear if Naruto told them what he experienced every second of every day.

Pain so intense that it felt as though it might burst out of his skin, even in the real world. Terror so frightening that it was all Naruto could do to keep from screaming out loud.

The dog morphed into a subtly different shape, his nose and mouth becoming more narrow, his eyes more fierce, and his body more lithe. His tail grew more bushy, and split several times. There, glaring down at him with gleeful aggression, was the fox. The nine-tailed demon that tormented Naruto all his life.

There was no way Naruto could tell the others that his entire life was spent in a waking nightmare. He couldn't concentrate, he couldn't focus, he couldn't relax, and he couldn't even sleep. So much agony that it felt like some sort of pressure inside. Sometimes he wondered that he didn't explode with the sheer power of this affliction.

Naruto lost track of what Iruka-sensei was saying, as the pain overwhelmed him again.

* * *

This was important. He was sure of it. There was some reason he needed to be aware of what was going on around him. Something that demanded that he take his body off the sort of autopilot that was most of his life.

Iruka and Mizuki stared at him from across the table. "Well, Naruto, aren't you going to at least try and do the bunshin, so you can pass?"

Naruto quickly recalled what was going on. Right. Final exam. Practical test. Except that he didn't really know the bunshin. Well, he had the seals, but he hadn't practiced it at all.

Fighting the pain, Naruto focused enough to call on his chakra, and ran through the seals he can memorized. But he couldn't focus, and his chakra faltered and floundered without direction. A single image of him appeared, pale and transparent, and soon vanished.

Iruka sighed sadly. "Sorry, Naruto, but that won't cut it. Maybe next year."

Mizuki interrupted before Naruto lost focus. "Well, he at least got one to appear this time. Why don't we let him pass? I mean, he's been doing this for years, now. We can cut him some slack."

Iruka shook his head firmly. "We can't send him off without the proper instruction. You know that Mizuki."

Naruto smiled and thought he scratched the back of his while he excused himself. It was hard to hear himself over the screams, which only increased in volume as he was unable to keep his focus on the outside world.

He was vaguely aware that his body was pouting and sitting alone on a rooftop when he heard a voice. It sounded familiar. But it couldn't be Mizuki, since Mizuki was dead. Though it sounded a lot like him.

Naruto turned his head, and there sat Mizuki. Naruto's face stretched in a smile and asked what was up, while he realized that it was only in his mind that Mizuki had died. Right?

Probably. People in the real world didn't seem to die nearly as often as they did in his world. Or was this another vision? Would Mizuki explode in a shower of gore, another trick by the demon fox to fool him into a false hope? Maybe the test had also been part of the illusion, making Naruto fond of Mizuki before brutally killing him.

But instead of dying, Mizuki began to speak. Naruto caught bits of it between screams and brief periods of particularly intense pain.

"... second chance... tonight... steal the Forbidden Scroll... prove you have the skills... meet me in the forest..."

Naruto perked up, in spite of himself. This was definitely too good to be true. The Kyuubi had to be behind this. Now Naruto was waiting in horrified expectation for Mizuki to die a terrible death. But the man merely nodded in response to something Naruto had asked, and leaped off the roof.

Maybe, just maybe, this was a real chance.

* * *

It was dark. Naruto crouched carefully in the shadows until the two chuunin sentries had passed out of sight, before slipping into the scroll library. Suddenly the floor in front of him burst in a shower of splinters, as a horde of chuunin leaped at him, eyes glowing with-

No, wait. The floor was still there. The chuunin stabbed him repeatedly, hacking off his right arm, while Naruto walked through them and across the unreal hole.

He fell into a dark pit, getting skewered on the spikes at the bottom. His wounds burned as the acid-tipped spikes tore through his legs and torso. He heard the growl of predatory animals from the darkness beyond his dimming sight.

Naruto shook his head sharply to clear his vision, and looked through the scrolls quickly, looking for the one that Mizuki had specified. The Forbidden Scroll. After several minutes, he came across it, sitting innocently on a shelf with genin-level techniques.

Suddenly the scroll turned white-hot, shining brighter than the sun as it incinerated his hand. Falling from his grasp, it quickly set the floor on fire. The scrolls quickly ignited, and before Naruto could even think about escaping, he was engulfed in fire. His skin blistered and peeled off his face and remaining limbs.

Naruto wrested control back from the nightmare, and quickly snuck back to the window, looking around the the sentries. They were still gone. But before he could jump out of the window, he heard a noise behind him. He turned stare into the face of the Third Hokage.

The Hokage smirked, his slitted pupils wide in the darkness. Moving so fast that his movement became a blur of motion, the old man pulled a sword from somewhere and impaled Naruto through the stomach. The sword twisted right and left, up and down, while Naruto vomited copious amounts of blood.

Naruto forced himself to ignore this, and quickly performed his prank technique, the Sexy no Jutsu. But instead of turning into a beautiful female, his insides twisted painfully, as his organs were caught somewhere in the middle of transforming into a female. He felt his insides burn as his ruptured stomach spilled acid onto his other internal organs.

Forcing his way back to the reality, Naruto watched as the Hokage, caught off guard by such a beautiful apparition, fainted, leaving Naruto free to leap out the window. Landing, he began to run toward the forest. He had not gotten more than a few yards when a kunai pierced the Achilles tendon of his left leg. He stumbled and fell onto his face as more blades embedded themselves in his back and thighs.

Naruto looked back, and saw the two sentries smirk, their eyes glowing as they slowly approached, their knives glittering dangerously.

Naruto, with great effort, ignored this illusion, and made it into the forest without incident.

But, as he expected, the offer was, indeed, to good to be true, though not because of the Kyuubi. Somehow, by the end of the night, he was a genin.

* * *

Time passed.

Naruto wasn't sure just how his infantile whining had gotten them a C-ranked mission, but it seemed that the Hokage had a soft spot for him.

And so here Naruto was, on a mission with his team to escort some old guy to Wave country. As he was slowly growing accustomed to doing, he tuned out the random, horrific images that Kyuubi projected to him. While he still felt the pain, it was slowly growing easier to concentrate, and to tell the difference between what is real, and what is not.

So, when two ninja suddenly leaped from the forest and killed Kakashi-sensei, Naruto just kept walking. Knowing that it was an illusion, he was able to ignore the sounds as Sasuke took on the mysterious, masked enemies, and Sakura set herself in front of Tazuna, just as he was also currently ignoring the mob of rabid animals that were tearing out his intestines. Naruto just kept walking.

It wasn't until he was about fifty yards away that he realized that it might not be an illusion. Running back, he made it just in time to see Kakashi appear and take out the two ninja that Sasuke had been fighting.

After questioning Tazuna about his less-than-truthful mission request, Kakashi turned on Naruto.

"Naruto, what were you thinking, just leaving your teammates to die like that?! I thought I made it clear with the bell-test that teammates are the most important thing on a mission!" The silver-haired jounin's disappointment could be clearly heard in his voice. Even if Sasuke was too stuck up to get it, and Sakura was to obsessed with Sasuke to pay attention to it, Kakashi had been sure that Naruto had learned this lesson.

Naruto opened his mouth to speak, but found that he had nothing to say. What _could_ he say? "I'm sorry, I thought it was all a trick?' 'Whoops, thought the Kyuubi was fooling me again?' And any lie would never convince Kakashi.

Kakashi frowned when Naruto just stared at him, eyes and mouth wide. The sun, a bit behind Naruto, cast shadows across Naruto's face, especially the permanent dark circles that ringed his eyes. The jounin started to feel a little worried. Was Naruto so tired that he hadn't even noticed? Those dark circles had been there ever since the jounin had seen Naruto. Maybe he was unable to sleep because of the demon, and so was unable to focus?

Or maybe he was deaf? Which would explain why he was reported to never listen in class, and why he hadn't heard the fight just now. Though it wouldn't explain his lack of reaction to the destruction of Kakashi's bunshin.

Deciding to deal with it later, the jounin just motioned for everyone to follow him. He noticed, with some worry, that Naruto had no playful or hot-tempered response to Sasuke's taunts of cowardice.

* * *

"Get down!"

Everyone flattened to the ground as an enormous sword flew overhead. Everyone, that is, except Naruto, who had dismissed this as another trick.

Fortunately, he was only hit with the handle, though that was enough to send him flying into a tree with cracked ribs and ruptured organs. The sword, too heavy and too fast to be much affected by the impact with a single light genin, flew further and stuck itself into a tree.

A masked ninja appeared on the sword, his smirk evident in his voice. "Well, I guess he wasn't really cut out to be a ninja anyway, right? So no real loss there."

Kakashi cringed. He was _not_ going to lose a student on their first C-rank mission. He moved his headband up to expose his Sharingan eye, and attacked.

While he and Zabuza were fighting, Naruto was trying desperately to force his way out of the illusion. He had been getting so good, or so he thought, at seeing past it. But now he couldn't see the reality beyond himself laying at the base of a tree, injured by some ridiculously large sword. That couldn't be real. Perhaps the Kyuubi had only been toying with him, letting him think that he was able to see past the nightmare. Or, if not seeing past it, then being so used to it that it no longer affected him.

Naruto checked himself. Well, maybe it could be real. After all, that had been the only injury so far, and usually there were many that followed. And, this was supposed to be a mission, a real ninja mission, so there was a possibility of this sort of thing.

Sitting up, Naruto ignored the pain as he looked around. Kakashi-sensei was fighting some sort of ninja. Sasuke and Sakura were standing guard over Tazuna.

Maybe this could be his chance to make up for screwing up earlier! But how? If the enemy ninja was a match for Kakashi-sensei, then there was no way a genin could do anything to him, right?

Suddenly, Naruto found himself involved in the fight. Zabuza was targeting him, while Kakashi furiously tried to defend both himself and Naruto.

In a blur of motion, Naruto found himself in a headlock, while Kakashi looked on helplessly.

"Not dead after all, eh, kid?" Zabuza's voice rumbled through Naruto's body. "I guess I can make an example of you for your sensei, what do you think?"

Naruto saw the horrified expression on Kakashi-sensei's face, knowing this his student was going to die, and being unable to do anything about it. Naruto was furious. How dare Zabuza do that to him! Naruto knew pain, and knew that he never wanted his friends to experience this sort of pain in the real world.

Naruto wished that Zabuza could have just a taste of the pain. Just a glimpse of a nightmare of dying friends and horrible tortures.

Naruto could feel the pain rising in him, so intense now that his eyes almost rolled back into his head. Why, now, would Kyuubi choose to torment him more? But it felt different. The feeling of pressure grew greater and greater, as the pain mounted to unbearable levels. It felt like he would explode just from the sheer agony.

Unbidden, a thought came to his mind. _**Push. Push it out.**_ It was like a voice, but not a voice. Like a thought, but from somewhere else, faintly familiar, but unrecognizable. Naruto felt Zabuza's hard bicep press against hit throat, and _pushed_.

It was like waking up for the first time. An incredible lightness of being. Like he had been wearing many heavy weights, which had been suddenly removed.

Meanwhile, Zabuza stiffened. He saw Kakashi's eyes change, pupils elongating, and both eyes changing to a glowing orange color. The mask fell down to reveal a mouth full of sharp fangs, honed to points. The sky darkened, turning a sickly blood-red. The sun blackened, somehow shining with a dark light that filled him with despair.

And the kid in his arms turned to face him, eyes glowing with the same unholy light, and face contorted in an expression of ancient malice. The kid's hands, no, his claws, suddenly sliced open his stomach, cutting and tearing all in one fell swipe.

Zabuza doubled over in pain, his vision just clear enough to see a feral Kakashi lunge for his throat.

Zabuza knew he had to be dead. But he wasn't. Injury after injury, cut after cut, bite after bite, he didn't die. He would getting hurt in places he thought he remembered having cut off. Over and over again. Time seemed to stand still as he was killed, and yet not killed, again and again.

He looked to one side, and there he was. His old friend from the Academy. The one he had shared meals with, trained with, and ultimately killed. Zabuza could do nothing as this newcomer joined in the attack.

Then the others he had killed, one by one, came to join. Zabuza would have screamed, if his throat had not been ripped out. Or had it been bitten out? Or both? No, he was screaming. Only, now he wasn't. It was confusing. It was horrifying. But mostly, it was painful. Minutes turned into hours, hours turned into days.

Kakashi was more than a little confused when Zabuza grunted, twitched, and then suddenly dropped to the ground with a strangled shout. Naruto stood there, shuddering and shaking.

Not daring to ask questions, Kakashi checked Zabuza's body. Still alive. Kakashi resolved to amend this shortly, and then stood up to examine Naruto.

The boy was no longer shaking, and wore an expression of pained endurance for a second, before he gave an exaggerated sigh and wiped his forehead. "Whew! Thanks, Kakashi-sensei! You're awesome! I didn't even see you touch him!"

Kakashi wanted to ask Naruto about what had just happened,, but at the same time, was well aware that even if Naruto knew, he probably wouldn't say, and even if he did, Kakashi wasn't sure he really wanted to know. But the Hokage would definitely hear about this.

* * *

**3.** This was going to go on in similar fashion, as Naruto learned to control and use this 'power'. Maybe something odd would happen if Itachi tried to use the Tsukiome on him. Or maybe it would work like normal, just not affecting Naruto at all since he is used to it. Perhaps Naruto would go on to learn how to use the other powers derived from Kyuubi, the Amaterasu and whatever you would call the Sharingan's enhanced learning curve.

**4.** I stopped writing on this because I thought Naruto was getting too overpowered (being able to use the Tsukiome on anyone at any time, even if he has to touch them, is pretty overpowered, not mention if he got Amaterasu or something), and I thought that I made him recover too fast from the nightmare, just kinda breezing through it. And I didn't feel like rewriting that part, because it would be really dull to read about the nightmare constantly, almost as annoying as it was to write it. Bleah.

This is the last fragment for a while. The others are only outlines or incredible short.


End file.
